A Woman’s Right to Decide . . .
The issue here? A Woman’s right to decide for herself what care she needs without threats of legal action or hindrance to healthcare.
As can be seen in the first map, Illinois is centrally located amongst many states which ban or time-limit getting an abortion. Hence many patients go to Illinois as it is closer and less restrictive than other states.
State Status of a Woman’s Right to Decide
Above: Abortion in the United States Dashboard, KFF
In 2023 Illinois was the single largest destination for women seeking to exercise their reproductive rights and decide what is right for them.
Site for the Map: Think Big America
Last year, nearly 37,000 out-of-state patients were able to receive care in Illinois. That’s 36,990 women who couldn’t receive sufficient care in their home state.
Illinois is proud to help those who come to its clinics. What is the best way to help out-of-state woman? Codify the right to decide on abortion in these states.
That’s why we are supporting ballot initiatives that would restore or expand abortion rights in states like Florida that are currently relying on Illinois’ clinics.
The stakes are obvious: Across the country, 170,000 women had to travel out of state last year for care. Restoring the right to decide on abortion access everywhere is imperative.
Yep. Let’s get the nanny state out of the decisions women make about their bodies. Liberals and conservatives agree on that.
Unfortunately a lot of conservatives don’t agree. Their rhetoric about “get the nanny state out of…..” always applied mainly to protecting the “right” of corporations and the wealthy to shit all over everyone else, not the self-determination of the average individual. In any case, for some decades now American conservatism has been dominated by fundamentalism, whose goals include enforcing religious taboos on the entire society and pushing women back into a subordinate social role. Libertarianism doesn’t have much relevance to it any more. Just look at the map above. The states with the most restrictive laws are the most religious ones. Alaska is a solid Republican state but not highly religious, and it’s in the “no gestational limits” category. In practice it’s all about religion now.
@Infidel753,
Although I do not disagree with you; I do believe there is a deeper context to conservative religiosity. In politics, like all magic, there is a important role played by the art of misdirection. Just like the Latter Day Saints projected deep self-righteousness while using the Avenging Angels as a means for the elders to confiscate the property of younger members, then modern conservatives program to save the babies affords them moral cover for using misogyny and racism as their preferred means to pander to the bottom of society.
No babies need actually be saved in the adoption of this fig leaf and no white males were harmed in the making of this BS. It is not so different when limousine liberals decry climate change and all kinds of bigotry while enabling financialization. No planets are saved and no marginalized minority will prosper so the same con can be used over and over again; just rinse and repeat. Wall Street loves our two party system because regardless which party wins, Wall Street cannot lose. Society is so arranged that its scapegoats are almost equally divided along idiot-illogical lines. This is why neither Liz nor Bernie ever had a chance to be POTUS and why the establishment status quo is what it is.
@rc,
There are only two major parties in the US because we have a winner-take-all election system in which more than two parties is unstable. Until the Constitution is changed to make American government a parliamentary system, that won’t change.
As for the political dynamics between these two parties, one is right-wing extremist and the other is conservative. That won’t change until a large fraction of the middle class and working class stop seeing themselves as temporarily inconvenienced millionaires and unite in their own self-interest. Politics would be the way to accomplish that, but the electorate has come to see politics as entertainment, with Trump as the entertainer-in-chief. Opiate of the masses, indeed.
@Joel,
Yes sir; yes indeed.