How Chicagoans Can Support Reproductive Justice RIGHT NOW

KELLY HAYES

The organizers of Chicago’s Rally for Reproductive Justice! would like to thank everyone in who attended tonight’s rally, and everyone who supported the event but could not attend. We centralized some resources and action steps to help you all stay plugged in. We hope you will share it with others who may want to join the fight. This list is by no means exhaustive, but we hope you will find it useful.

The National Network of Abortion Funds (NNAF)

NNAF builds power with members to remove financial and logistical barriers to abortion access by centering people who have abortions and organizing at the intersections of racial, economic, and reproductive justice. Their website can also direct people in need to an abortion fund in their area, and also allows donors to select abortion funds in the location of their choosing. You can donate here.

You can find a list of clinics in hard-hit states that we have tried to uplift this week here.

Local Support

Given that Illinois is a regional hub for safe, legal abortion care, donating to our local abortion funds is an important way of ensuring care for people affected by abortion bans.

The Midwest Access Coalition helps people traveling to, from, and within the Midwest access a safe, legal abortion with support in the following areas: travel coordination and costs, lodging, food, medicine, and emotional support. You can donate to their work here. Midwest Access is also in need of volunteers. You can learn more about that here.

The Chicago Abortion Fund supports callers in Illinois, and across the Midwest and the entire country who are traveling to access the safe and compassionate care they deserve. They have a list of needs and action items that can be found here.

The Illinois Caucus for Adolescent Health (ICAH) is a network of empowered youth and adult accomplices who transform public consciousness and increase the capacity of school, family and healthcare systems to support the sexual health, rights, and identities of youth. ICAH educates, advocates, and organizes for reproductive justice in Illinois, transforming public consciousness and envisioning a world in which all young adults use their power to achieve health and well-being in their own lives and for their communities. You can support ICAH’s work by donating here. You can learn more about ICAH’s programs and workshops here.

The Illinois Choice Action Team (ICAT) is a committed group of volunteers who work for pro-choice candidates during election cycles, provide reproductive rights education, monitor state legislation related to reproductive rights, and provide escorts at various Illinois clinics that offer abortion care. You can support their work here.

Chicago Volunteer Doulas is a birth justice organization that provides comprehensive doula support for vulnerable communities in Chicagoland. You can support their work here.

​If you attended tonight’s event, you also heard from the Chicago Chapter of the National Asian Pacific American Women’s Forum (NAPAWF) was founded in 2005 to create a safe space for AAPI women, support and develop AAPI women leaders, and move forward conversations about AAPI women’s issues in the Chicago area. If you are in the Chicago area and would like to learn more about NAPAWF-Chicago and/or would like to get involved, please contact their organizers at nalam@napawf.org.

Clinics

Independent clinics are the only abortion clinics in Alabama, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Dakota, West Virginia and Montana. Clinics work closely with abortion funds to make sure patients can get care, with legal organizations to challenge anti-abortion laws, and with their own communities to make sure they are offering the services people need most. You can donate to independent providers here.

The Reproductive Health Act

[UPDATE: With the support of people like you, this bill has passed. Many thanks to all who engaged with this fight.]

When Roe is overturned, some of our state’s decades-old abortion laws will no longer be enjoined by the courts. But we can get out in front of that by getting the Reproductive Health Act passed. Enjoined laws that the RHA would do away with include:

  • Spousal Consent
  • Bans on assisted reproductive techniques, such as in vitro fertilization (IVF), and certain forms of prenatal testing
  • Doctor Consent Committees
  • Restrictions on certain forms of birth control
  • 24-Hour Waiting Periods
  • Misinformed Consent
  • Hospital Requirement and other TRAP laws
  • No Confidentiality
  • Criminal Penalties

Without this bill, private insurance companies in a post-Roe Illinois would also be free to deny coverage for birth control and abortion care, even when a pregnant person’s health is threatened or they are a victim of rape or incest.

Since Illinois is a regional hub for safe, legal abortions, any impediment to care here affects people in multiple states, so we need to do this in defense of ourselves and in defense of others.

This website offers several options (to help you call, email or tweet your rep) and it takes almost no time at all.

Recommended Reading

There’s a lot of great content out there on this topic, but we wanted to offer a list of articles (and some videos that include transcripts) that have been recommended by the organizers of this event.

If you did not get a copy of the mini zine we shared at the event, or would like to print and fold more copies of the zine, you can find it here. Thank you again for being part of the fight for reproductive justice. We look forward to connecting and building with you all in the days and months to come.

Note: Supporters of reproductive justice who would like to reprint this list on their blogs, websites or on other platforms should feel free to do so.

 

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Artwork: Molly Costello

 

Published by KELLY HAYES

Queer indigenous organizer and nonviolent direct action trainer with We Charge Genocide and the Chicago Light Brigade.