In (belated) honor of International Women's Day, here's a few snapshots of progress on the status of women's rights and reproductive freedom here in Illinois:

• The ACLU of Illinois has a number of recently resolved and ongoing cases on reproductive justice issues:
  
  
  
  • We filed an amicus curiae brief in the case of Morr-Fitz v. Blagojevich, now pending before the Illinois Supreme Court. The case involves a challenge by two pharmacists and three pharmacy companies to an Illinois regulation that requires pharmacies to assure seamless access to contraception when an individual pharmacist refuses to fill a contraceptive prescription. The Illinois regulation – adopted after several women faced undue delay and harassment in trying to fill prescriptions for contraception – simply makes clear that the pharmacy must provide some efficient procedure to allow such prescriptions to be filled, even when one pharmacist objects. You can read the brief here.
    
    ACLU of Illinois' Reproductive Rights Project Director Lorie Chaiten recorded a videoblog explaining the latest developments in the ACLU's case:
    
    
    
    
  • We won a victory in the U.S. District Court when Judge David Coar ruled the Illinois Parental Notice of Abortion Act of 1995 unconstitutional. You can read a statement from Lorie Chaiten, the Reproductive Rights Project Director here.
    
  
  
• NARAL has an excellent overview of Illinois legislation affecting all aspects of Reproductive Justice. Illinois gets a B- on their 2008 Report Card on Women's Reproductive Rights.
  
  
• You can also check out the ACLU's Women's Rights Project year end report, which praises the ACLU of Illinois' work to add gender disparate inpact to the Illinois Civil Rights Act:
  

  ADVOCATING FOR A GENDER DISPARATE IMPACT STATUTE IN ILLINOIS
  
  The ACLU of Illinois, with the assistance of WRP, drafted language for and crafted the
  advocacy strategy to support Senate Bill 1467, which amends the Illinois Civil Rights Act of 2003 to
  ban gender discrimination by units of government in Illinois. At present, only race, color and national
  origin are protected under the Act. The bill passed both chambers by unanimous votes and currently
  awaits the Governor's signature. If signed into law, gender discrimination claims could be
  brought under either disparate treatment or disparate impact theories. In other words, the law
  would allow for challenges to policies that are discriminatory on their face but would also allow for
  suit to challenge policies that, even if not discriminatory as written, disproportionately harm women
  in their implementation. Moreover, the bill preserves "catalyst" attorney's fees allowing a plaintiff to
  recover litigation fees and costs when the suit serves to change a defendant's conduct.