Vice President Kamala Harris read from a meeting with health care providers, students, elected officials and advocates in Chicago, IL.

Yesterday in Chicago, Illinois Vice President Kamala Harris convened a roundtable with health care providers, students, elected officials and reproductive health advocates to discuss access to reproductive health care and abortion in the wake of the Supreme Court’s overturn. Roe v. Wade in Dobbs. The vice president’s visit follows a week of aggressive moves by congressional Republicans to further limit women’s reproductive freedoms, including a national abortion ban and attempts to block women’s access to prescription drugs. At the state level, abortion bans have been implemented in West Virginia and Indiana.

At the table, the Vice President thanked participants for their work in protecting reproductive rights in Illinois. He thanked them for the care they do across the country for women who are being denied the reproductive health services they need in their respective states. Participants expressed concern about the dangers of misinformation, and shared stories of how. Dobbs It affects women’s health and well-being. Health care providers have discussed the impact Dobbs on the health care workforce – making it difficult to train the next generation of health care professionals and growing concerns about the mental health and well-being of reproductive health care providers. Participants thanked the vice president for the Biden-Harris administration’s work on reproductive health care and abortion prevention.

The Vice President gathered the leaders who are fighting to protect the right of a woman to make her own reproductive health decisions. Since May, the vice president has held more than 20 meetings on the fight to protect reproductive rights. The Vice President brought together more than 150 state legislators from 18 states, health care providers, constitutional lawyers, faith leaders, state attorneys general, disability rights leaders, higher education leaders, advocates, and civil rights and reproductive rights leaders. .

Speech participants:

1. Governor JB Pritzker, Governor of Illinois
2. Mayor Lightfoot (D-Chicago)
3. Congressman Danny Davis (D-IL-07)
4. Melanie Fontes, Director, Office of Civil Rights, Department of Health and Human Services (HHS)
5. Megan Jayfo, executive director of the Chicago Abortion Fund
6. Alison Cowett, Medical Director, Family Planning Associates
7. Myra Bajwa, Student Organizer, Project Reproductive Freedom
8. Diana Parker Kafka, Executive Director of the Midwest Access Coalition
9. Jennifer Welch, President and CEO, Planned Parenthood of Illinois and Action for Planned Parenthood Illinois