Students on college campuses across Illinois will now have an easier time finding contraception and other related services ... under a new bill signed into law this week.
This is one of two bills Governor Pritzker signed Friday on the campus of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign dealing with reproductive services.
It requires colleges and universities in the state to have healthcare professionals on campus and available to prescribe birth control and medication abortion starting with this school year.
State Senator Celina Villanueva (D-Chicago) spearheaded the bill. She's also an alumna of UIUC, and thanked student activists who led the charge for the measure.
"You made it here. You made a law happen in the state of Illinois to expand reproductive rights for other students," she said, noting that the law would also benefit students from other states and countries where reproductive services were not as available.
But Mary Kate Zander from Right to Life of Illinois called the law disgusting, and describes it as an example of catering to what she called the abortion industry at the expense of vulnerable women.
The second law signed by the governor gives a new layer of legal protection to doctors in Illinois who prescribe abortion medication.
Back in May, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F-Kennedy Junior called on the FDA to review the safety of the drug mifepristone.
Anti-abortion activists have been pushing for the government to ban the drug -- which has been prescribed for decades in the U.S. by doctors to women who want to end their pregnancies in the first trimester.
State Senator Karina Villa (D-West Chicago) said the new law spells out that mifepristone is still legal in Illinois, as long as it's recommended by the World Health Organization.
"We will not allow extreme restrictive policies from other states to threaten the livelihoods of our health care providers, and dictate the care that people receive in our state;" she said.
In response, Right To Life of Illinois' Zander called it a bizarre law change designed to cherry-pick the facts.