Illinois Lawmakers Get Serious About Your Right To Abortion Privacy

Also: Minors will no longer need parental consent to get birth control.

Photo by Sasun Bughdaryan on Unsplash

In 2022, the Supreme Court decided that, contrary to decades worth of precedent, Americans do not have a right to privacy as it concerns their personal medical decisions. As such, people all over the country lost the right to have a safe, legal abortion (though, let us remember that while the right “existed,” the ability to get one was another story).

But it brings me great joy to say that the state of Illinois (where I happen to live) still takes that right very seriously. So seriously, in fact, that lawmakers in the state just passed two bills expanding the right to keep one’s reproductive choices one’s own damn business. As they should be!

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Over the weekend, the state Senate passed a law (SB 3341) that would allow minors to get birth control without parental consent, which they were not previously able to do except under certain circumstances (like being married or having already given birth). The fact that this is not already legal here is pretty shocking, so we’re very glad that this will soon be corrected.

Also this weekend, the state House passed the Reproductive Health Privacy Act (HB 5295), an initiative from the governor’s office that would allow patients to choose to have information about any abortion-related healthcare services or any healthcare services related to gender dysphoria removed from their digital medical records. The information would then only be shared in specific circumstances, with the patient’s consent.

The bill is specifically meant to protect out-of-state patients who may come to Illinois for abortion or gender affirmation care from getting in legal trouble once they return to their home states. This is of particular importance right now given that states have really been testing the waters lately when it comes to imprisoning people for having had abortions or even miscarriages.

Georgia Woman Won't Go To Prison For Having A Miscarriage After All

Hell, North Carolina legislators just voted in favor of letting people just kill anyone they think is going to have or perform an abortion.

Life-loving NC Republicans Want To Make It Legal To Kill Anyone Providing Or Seeking An Abortion

Recently, Jessica Valenti at Abortion, Every Day reported on several incidents in which mothers have gotten into legal trouble — having their children taken away or even being imprisoned — for helping their daughters obtain abortion-related health care.

Via Abortion, Every Day:

We’ll start with a mother called Jane and her 14-year-old daughter, Dana; the pair live in a Southern state where abortion is banned.

As is often the case with scared teens, Dana didn’t tell her mother that she was pregnant right away. That means by the time they started looking for abortion clinics, every single day counted. They did the difficult and time-consuming work of finding and booking an appointment with an out-of-state clinic, getting financial assistance from a practical support fund (the excellent Brigid Alliance), and planning to leave within days.

Jane doesn’t know who called the authorities, just that CPS knocked on their door and took a terrified Dana from their home. If/When/How legal services director Kylee Sunderlin tells me that this removal was done extrajudicially, without a court order.

The CPS caseworker also repeatedly threatened Jane, claiming she’d be charged with murder if Dana had an abortion—and that her other child, a toddler, would be taken from her care.

Again, it’s not illegal to do this, but the CPS worker insisted that Jane was “coercing” her daughter into getting an abortion, which she wasn’t. You see, because anti-abortion people are well aware that they sound like monsters trying to force 14-year-olds (or anyone else, really) to give birth against their will, they try to claim that the patients actually want to have the babies and are being coerced or otherwise forced into having the abortion against their will.

Unfortunately for Dana, the time she was kept in CPS custody caused her to miss her appointment and she ended up being forced to give birth — after which, naturally, CPS investigated her for being a young mother.

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It’s unfortunate that we need to protect out-of-state abortion patients in this way, but it’s great that we’re doing it. I’m glad to live in a state where we not only protect the reproductive rights of our own residents, but those of anyone who comes here seeking help.

And maybe I’m being delusional, but I kind of think that if these states keep up this bullshit — taking kids away from their parents, taking parents away from their kids, making murder legal, etc. — their shitty abortion laws are not going to be long for this world.