Illinois No Longer Requires Parental Notification for Abortion – Opinion

An Illinois law was passed Wednesday which removed the requirement that parents notify minors seeking abortions. The law, signed by Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker in December, repealed a 1995 law (which didn’t actually go into effect until 2013 due to protracted litigation over it).

Per the Center Square

Pritzker, at a stop-and-go campaign in East St. Louis on Wednesday, promised that abortion would remain legal in Illinois for all girls, regardless of whether their parents were notified.

“Just across the river, Missouri Republicans have nearly eliminated women’s ability for women to access vital reproductive health care,” Pritzker said. “While here in Illinois, we’ve fought to expand women’s rights.”

A judicial bypass clause was included in the 1995 law. According to ABC7

In that time, the ACLU of Illinois assisted hundreds of minors seeking abortion who didn’t want to or couldn’t notify their parent or guardian.

“It was emotionally challenging for young people to have to share the most intimate details of their lives and their family situations with a judge,” said ACLU of Illinois staff attorney Emily Werth.

Most recent records show that more than 1,100 Illinoisan children under 18 experienced an abortion in 2020.

39 states currently require parental consent or notification. The Guttmacher Institute noted:

The majority of states require parental involvement in a minor’s decision to have an abortion. These states usually require parental consent, or notification, of one parent. But, only a small number of states will require that both parents are involved. A few states have requirements that both the parents and minors present valid government identification for the provider of abortion and/or the signing of the parental consent forms. A few states require that the parent also prove their parenthood. Several states allow grandparents or other adult relatives to be involved in place of the minor’s parents, and many waive parental involvement requirements if there is a medical emergency or the young person is the victim of abuse or neglect.

In response to the law going into effect, Aurora Mayor Richard Irvin, who is seeking the Republican nomination for governor and hoping to challenge Pritzker in the fall, said: “It’s a shame that J.B. Pritzker is using something that is such an important issue for us to be talking about as political fodder. He does not have anything other to talk about than trying to make something like that about politics.”

Per The Center Square

More than 9600 residents from out-of-state terminated their Illinois-born pregnancies in 2020 According to the Illinois Department of Public Health. Missouri had more than 6500.