Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker Friday signed into law two measures he said were aimed at fortifying the state’s status as a safe haven for abortion rights.
The two-term Democrat moved to expand on Illinois’ existing interstate “shield laws” to protect abortion providers from out-of-state criminal liability.
The other measure Pritzker approved was pushed by student activists and would require public universities and colleges to offer access to contraceptions and abortion-inducing drugs, like mifepristone, at their student health-care clinics.
“As an anti-woman, anti-science, authoritarian administration invades our privacy, Illinois is holding the line, and we are fighting back,” Pritzker said.
Through Pritzker’s actions Friday, licensed professional midwives and drug wholesalers are being added to the list of those who will be protected from out-of-state criminal prosecution for helping patients access abortion care in Illinois.
Another provision of that law cements access to previously-approved abortion-inducing pills that have been deemed safe by the World Health Organization in the event the U.S. Food and Drug Administration revokes approval.
Enactment of the Illinois law comes as U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. directed the FDA to do a “complete review” of mifepristone. The federal agency has since placed restrictions on who can access and dispense the drug — a move Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul is seeking to reverse.
Pritzker signed both bills at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, where students last spring pushed for a school-wide referendum that now serves as the basis of the law requiring access to abortion-inducing medication in university health clinics.
And while the initiative overwhelmingly passed, the campus’ student health center refused to offer the drugs, citing a lack of “in-house expertise.” A year later, state Sen. Celina Villanueva (D-Chicago), who also attended the University of Illinois, took up the charge and carried the legislation through Springfield.
“I highly doubt that when you all were thinking about the referendum, that this was where you thought that this was going to end up,” Villanueva told the student activists at Friday’s bill signing. “You made a law happen in the state of Illinois to expand reproductive rights for other students.”
Starting this fall, campus health providers must make available health care professionals authorized to prescribe medication abortion. Students can pick up the drug at the university pharmacy or student health center via a provider licensed to dispense the medication.
Recent graduate Emma Darbro was part of the student group behind the campus-wide referendum. She called the law the group’s “last act of love for our peers.”
“I hope all of us being here today, in part because of a referendum that was written on a college apartment floor by two girls with a Google Doc and a dream, reminds the young people of Illinois that you don’t ever have to wait for someone to care as much as you do,” Darbro said. “You don’t ever have to wait for them to ask you — to tell you — that it’s your turn to take action.”
Mawa Iqbal covers Illinois politics and government for WBEZ.