North Cook News

Democratic Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker has cautioned against further abortion restrictions and vowed to protect access to the procedure in the Prairie State while calling on the federal government to take action and do more.

Pritzker joined Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper of North Carolina in promising to protect reproductive freedoms in their states, a recent POLITICO report said.

“We’re not an island, we’re an oasis,” Pritzker told POLITICO. “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."

Abortions and access to the procedure have become a hot-button issue in the political realm ever since the U.S. Supreme Court opted to overturn Roe v. Wade, ruling that access to abortion is not a constitutional right and leaving its legality up to each individual state, the POLITICO report said.

Since that ruling, many states across the Midwest and the South have enacted restrictions or total bans on the procedure. Pritzker, however, signed legislation that extended legal protections to people from other states who come to Illinois seeking an abortion.

POLITICO reported that Pritzker has also called upon federal lawmakers to enact a law that would legalize abortion across the country and help people who have to travel to legally undergo the procedure in another state.