Chicago moved one step closer to becoming a “Bodily Autonomy Sanctuary City” Thursday when a City Council committee advanced a proposal to ban local police from assisting out-of-state law enforcement with investigating people who travel here for abortions.
The health committee voted unanimously Thursday to send the proposed ordinance to the full Council floor, where it’s expected to receive a vote later this month. The move comes as progressive aldermen along with Mayor Lori Lightfoot have ramped up efforts to safeguard reproductive rights in the past two months, after the U.S. Supreme Court ended nearly 50 years of constitutional protection for abortion in a stunning overturn of Roe v. Wade.
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The idea of Chicago becoming a safe haven for abortion rights hails from its decades-long history as a sanctuary city for immigrants, a status that was strengthened under former Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s 2012 “Welcoming City” ordinance. Ahead of the vote on the bodily autonomy legislation, chief sponsor Ald. Rossana Rodriguez Sanchez, 33rd, said the immigrant rights movement provided a “blueprint” to others in need of refuge.
“This speaks to how our struggles are interconnected and how our city is responsible for acting with solidarity towards the people that are the most marginalized and the most impacted by a system that oppresses them,” Rodriguez Sanchez said.
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Earlier in July, Lightfoot signed an identical executive order prohibiting Chicago police and other city agencies from participating in any out-of-state investigation that seeks to punish someone for getting an abortion or other reproductive health care in Illinois. Rodriguez Sanchez’s legislation would codify the rules permanently.
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Officers would also be barred from making arrests, giving information about or providing access to someone who is wanted by another state for seeking an abortion, contraception or gender-affirming care in Chicago, under Rodriguez Sanchez’s proposal. The inclusion of the last piece comes after Texas enacted a law allowing the treatment for transgender people to be investigated as child abuse.
“Reproductive rights and LGBTQ+ rights are inextricably linked through the right to privacy, bodily autonomy and the freedom to be ourselves and build our own families without discrimination or criminalization,” Mike Ziri, director of public policy at Equality Illinois, said during the hearing. “And that is what is fundamentally at stake here.”
Since the June reversal of Roe v. Wade, Illinois has become one of the Midwest’s chief destinations for reproductive health care access, after Wisconsin, Missouri, Ohio and other states quickly moved to outlaw abortion. Some states with newfound abortion bans do not have exceptions for rape or incest, and there have also been laws cracking down on those who get or aid in abortions by subjecting them to lawsuits or arrest.
That has already led to a flurry of travel into Illinois, Chicago Abortion Fund spokesperson Alicia Hurtado told City Council committee members Thursday. She noted travelers from as far as Texas as well as a caller from Ohio who chose not to make an appointment in closer-by Indiana, in case of upcoming restrictions there — fears that became realized when the Hoosier State passed a near-total ban that will begin Sept. 15.
“We should not have to weigh our healthcare decisions or our bodily autonomy against threats of surveillance and criminalization,” Hurtado said. “Arbitrary state lines and imposed borders should not keep our neighbors from accessing the abortion care and health care that they want and need — despite efforts from anti-abortion lawmakers who are trying to make that our reality.”
In rolling out the proposed ordinance, some aldermen also took another shot at Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and his dramatic move last week to begin busing migrants who crossed the southern border in Texas to Chicago.
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“We’ve got people in this country that are using individual human beings as pawns, right? They are playing political games with lives right now,” Ald. Maria Hadden, 49th, said. “We see that, right, with this Texas governor just shipping people kind of against their will to different cities. And again, you know, just know that your City Council, your city departments, our community partners, people are coming together to try and do right by people.”
