NIRH Applauds Passage of Illinois Reproductive Health Act

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
June 1, 2019
Contact: Noah Gardy, [email protected]

Miller: “Passage of the RHA…ensures that despite the targeted bullying campaign by anti-abortion extremists… abortion access will remain law of the land in Illinois.”

SPRINGFIELD, IL – The National Institute for Reproductive Health (NIRH), hailed the passage of legislation in Illinois undoing outdated and discriminatory barriers to basic reproductive health care, including abortion, and enshrining the right to abortion access in Illinois state law. With the fight for reproductive freedom spreading and states like Alabama, Louisiana, and Ohio pushing legislation to ban abortion access, Illinois’s passage of the Reproductive Health Act (RHA), recognizes that each person has a fundamental right to make decisions about reproductive health care, including abortion, and treats abortion like all other health care, not as a crime. The passage of this bill, on the last day of the legislative session in Illinois, follows on the heels of Nevada signing a proactive abortion rights bill into law yesterday and passage of similar legislation in New York earlier this year.

“At a time when headlines about reproductive freedom seem uniformly negative, passage of the RHA is a necessary reminder that across the nation, support for abortion access continues to thrive – and is even growing in the face of anti-abortion overreach at the state level,” said Andrea Miller, President of the National Institute for Reproductive Health. “The fight for reproductive freedom is spreading and passage of the RHA, with its measures enshrining the right to abortion access in state law, ensures that despite the targeted bullying campaign by anti-abortion extremists to cast abortion rights in the most negative light, abortion access will remain law of the land in Illinois. I congratulate the Illinois legislature for passing this historic piece of legislation and look forward to even more states following suit to pass protections that guarantee access to abortion care.”

For more than a decade, NIRH has been a leader in the fight to advance reproductive freedom across the country. Recently, they were integral to the successful effort to repeal an outdated criminal abortion ban in Massachusetts, and they led the fight to pass New York’s landmark Reproductive Health Act. Earlier this year, NIRH published a report tracking the passage of more than 100 bills to advance reproductive health, rights, and justice in 27 states and the District of Columbia (D.C.).

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The National Institute for Reproductive Health builds power at the state and local level to change public policy, galvanize public support, and normalize women’s decisions about abortion and contraception.

Using a partnership model, NIRH provides state and local advocates with strategic guidance, hands-on support, and funding to create national change from the ground up. We form strategic partnerships with a wide range of organizations to directly impact the reproductive health and lives of women across the country. Each year, NIRH works in at least 20 states and more than a dozen localities; to date, NIRH has partnered with more than 170 reproductive health, rights, and justice organizations in 43 states and 64 localities across the country.