The work of our Reproductive Rights Project over the past three-plus decades has protected the rights of women in Illinois to broad access to a full range of reproductive health care services, including access to abortion. As a result of ACLU advocacy, women in Illinois face far fewer restrictions in their reproductive choices than do women in neighboring states.

In 2014, we helped hundreds of teens navigate the requirements of the Parental Notice of Abortion Act, a law that we had kept from being enforced for more than three decades. With a dedicated staff and devoted volunteer lawyers, we have been able to insure that these young women – the most vulnerable of young women – comply with the law, including providing lawyers for young women who go to court to secure a judicial waiver of the parental notice requirement.

We fought legislative and regulatory efforts to impose medically-unnecessary regulations on abortion clinics in Illinois, regulations that would have forced most clinics that perform abortions to become the equivalent of a small hospital.

The ACLU is working with regulators in Illinois to ensure privacy and security in rules governing electronic health records. For obvious reasons, this is a high priority for women who wish to maintain privacy with respect to their reproductive health care history. A dentist, for example, does not need access to information about a woman having an abortion when she was in college.

Our Reproductive Rights Project is helping ACLU advocates in other states – notably Ohio – to challenge restrictions on abortion clinics in their states.

We supported an advisory ballot measure in the November general election that supports the availability of prescription medications through employee health care plans, if other

prescriptions are covered.


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