After years of being on the defensive against bills like the infamous Born Alive Infant Protection Act and against continuous state funding of abstinence-only programming long after neighboring states abandoned the programs, a coalition of pro-choice groups in Illinois worked together to draft a comprehensive pro-active, pro-choice piece of legislation in their state. The legislation, which was voted out of the state assembly's House committee, never made it to a full vote. But the work that went on behind the scenes suggests that this is the beginning of a multi-year campaign to see this legislation passed in Illinois and and could lay the groundwork for pro-choice legislation in other states.

At first glance, the legislation proposed in Illinois, called the Reproductive Health and Access Act, looks like a Freedom of Choice Act, aimed at codifying Roe v. Wade in state statute. The proposed legislation affirms that the state should not "deny or interfere a pregnant woman's right terminate a pregnancy" and would ensure state funding of abortion services, even while the Hyde Amendment remains in place. The legislation also ensures access to contraception, as well as the right to refuse contraception (in response to histories of coercive and forced sterilization for women of color and women deemed unfit to reproduce).

Early members of the coalition, which has been spearheaded by Planned Parenthood Illinois and Illinois ACLU, began their work with meetings in Chicago and Springfield in the fall of 2007, where they debated what the legislation should cover, how it should be phrased, and how to get it passed. Following the 2008 election, they conducted focus groups and polls into early January. "It was that broad-ranging access that got early polling in the 60-70 percent across the board," said Lorie Chaiten, director of the ACLU's Reproductive Rights Project in Illinois. "It was really the whole continuum of choices that people supported very strongly."

But the proposed legislation doesn't stop at access to contraception and abortion. It goes on to demand that "all Illinois public schools shall offer medically accurate, age appropriate, comprehensive sexual health education" and that any provider conscience clause in the state be amended so that a patient can still receive the full range of reproductive options regardless of the provider's personal or religious objections. The reason for including this last component is that Illinois has a version of the conscience clause on the books that was passed in 1977; in its most extreme reading, it forbids employers from even asking employees if they plan to refuse service. The law is for "people who want for there to be an absolute right for the refusing physician or health care provider," Chaiten said. "So the HHS regs, in some ways, bring federal law to where some people argue the Illinois law already is."

It was that last part that got the coalition into the most trouble. The Catholic Church's Cardinal George wrote a letter (PDF) objecting to the bill, claiming that the passage of such legislation would cause Catholic hospitals to close and Catholic doctors and nurses to flee the state. Similar objections were raised when Illinois passed a requirement for emergency rooms to provide information about emergency contraception to sexual assault victims in 2002, said Terry Cosgrove, president and CEO of Personal PAC. Such dire predictions turned out to be false.  But the opposition's rhetoric worked best on legislators with close ties to the Catholic Church.

Some local Catholic Church leaders put up opposition to the bill, even campaigning against it on Sunday mornings and gathering signatures at church, but the opposition wasn't universal. "Our steering committee for the campaign includes a pro-choice nun," Chaiten said. "In fact, one of my colleagues who has been out meeting with different organizations, met with a coalition of pro-choice nuns. Not just pro-choice [but also] questioning nuns walked through the legislation and talked through it."

The coalition, made up of community groups like Mujeres Latinas en Acción, Black Women for Reproductive Justice, and the Chicago Abortion Fund, along with women's health care providers and the big reproductive rights groups, held a lobby day that they considered a success. "More voices were included in this discussion....diverse voices that served many different populations around the city and state," said Gaylon Alcaraz, executive director of the Chicago Abortion Fund, in an email. "Another positive that came out of this is because of these diverse voices, legislators, the public and media had the opportunity to hear from the ‘unusual suspects' and not just Planned Parenthood. The feedback we received from legislators was overwhelmingly positive. They were happy to see women of color speaking out about reproductive health and justice. They felt that Planned Parenthood shouldn't always be at their doors bringing the same message every year."

It's a sentiment echoed by Planned Parenthood. "It was so critical to these legislators and it was so important that they saw this whole long list of organizational support it really made a difference to them. Planned Parenthood and the ACLU, we have lobbyists down there everyday," said Beth Kanter, senior vice president of external affairs at Planned Parenthood Illinois. "What made a difference to these legislators was seeing the activists down there and seeing the other organizations down there who weren't typically there. I think that that moved people."

The bill ended up gaining support from 32 co-sponsors, 20 of which were female legislators. "So many groups did so much to push this issue forward and get it on the radar screen," Kanter said. "For example, Mujeres Latinas en Acción did a great job reaching out to a lot of the Latino legislators. Toni Bond's group, Black Women for Reproductive Justice, reached out to all of the African-American members and sent a letter and lobbied, which was so unbelievably helpful."

Even though the legislation didn't come to a vote this session, the coalition is continuing to work in the state and plan on introducing the legislation again next year. "We're going to keep fighting the good fight on this," Kanter said. "We continue to have a hard fight ahead of us but we're committed to this bill's passage because the women and men of the state of Illinois deserve a right to make choices about their reproductive health."

It's a battle that will be along one. "One thing we really have to focus on in the next nine months before we go into the next legislative session is to try to really mobilize the support around the state," ACLU's Chaiten said. Cosgrove admits that there are still many roadblocks in their path. "From my standpoint we need more pro-choice legislators. We need a lot more education with people around the issues that we're talking about." It won't be an easy battle, but if this coalition is successful in enacting pro-choice legislation, it could be a model for other states to follow -- instead of working to deflect anti-choice legislation year after year.