This Act sets forth the fundamental rights of individuals to make autonomous decisions about one's own reproductive health, including the fundamental right to use or refuse reproductive health care. This includes the fundamental right of an individual to use or refuse contraception or sterilization, and to make autonomous decisions about how to exercise that right; and the fundamental right of an individual who becomes pregnant to continue the pregnancy and give birth to a child, or to have an abortion, and to make autonomous decisions about how to exercise that right. This Act restricts the ability of the State to deny, interfere with, or discriminate against these fundamental rights.
The purposes of this Act are:
(1) To establish laws and policies that protect individual decision-making in the area of reproductive health and that support access to the full scope of quality reproductive health care for all in our State; and(2) To permit regulation of reproductive health care, including contraception, abortion, and maternity care, only to the extent that such regulation is narrowly tailored to protect a compelling State interest, which for the purposes of this Act means: consistent with accepted standards of clinical practice, evidence based, and narrowly tailored for the limited purpose of protecting the health of people seeking such care and in the manner that least restricts a person's autonomous decision-making.Added by P.A. 101-0013,§ 1-5, eff. 6/12/2019.