Gov. J.B. Pritzker | Facebook
Gov. J.B. Pritzker | Facebook
Gov. J.B. Pritzker is one of two Democratic state leaders now pledging to defend access to abortion procedures while pushing the federal government to do more.
In an interview with Politico, Pritzker made a statement defending abortion rights in Illinois.
“We’re not an island, we’re an oasis,” Pritzker said. “People come to Illinois to exercise what are their fundamental rights, and they’re being denied in other states, every state around us, and then another ring of states around them."
Abortion access has come to the center of the national political stage since last June, when the Supreme Court reversed decades of precedent establishing a Constitutional right to the procedure and instead leaving its legality up to states on an individual basis.
Since the high court's ruling, a growing number of states across the Midwest and the South have imposed restrictions or total bans, while Pritzker recently signed a state law providing legal protections to out-of-state residents seeking abortion care in Illinois.
In addition, Pritzker is now calling on the federal government to not only enact a federal law legalizing abortion nationwide, but also to assist people who have to travel from their home states for access to abortion.
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