CHICAGO — Long a conservative stronghold, DuPage County was once considered "one of the reddest counties in America." The suburban enclave west of Chicago produced a U.S.
House speaker and longtime state Senate president, both Republicans. It also served as the political home of the author of the Hyde Amendment, which banned the use of federal funds for abortion. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the party's presidential candidates routinely tapped residents of the county to raise big bucks for their campaigns.
But, "the tide began to turn" about a decade ago, said DuPage County Board Chair Deb Conroy — the first Democrat to hold that office in at least 75 years. Like many suburban areas across the country, one top issue continues to drive the change from politically red to blue: access to abortion. "We did it with hardworking candidates, volunteers and staff who made the case that Republicans were out of touch with the people, especially on issues like reproductive health," Conroy said.
Abortion rights were the major topic of Illinois delegates' breakfast program on the second day of the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, where Gov. JB Pritzker was expected to speak Tuesday night. The event runs through Thursday, when Vice President Kamala Harris is slated to make her case to voters in the Nov.
5 election. Speakers at the Illinois breakfast highlighted the state's unique position as an "island" for reproductive health care since the 2022 overturning of Roe v. Wade.
The split U.S. Supreme Court decision prompted a sea of state-level abortion bans, including in Illinois' neighboring states of Indiana, Kentucky and Missouri.
Even as Illinois Democrats have ceded more downstate legislative and congressional districts to Republicans over the past decade, they have strengthened numbers elsewhere by winning in former Republican bastions like DuPage County. Campaigning on issues like abortion access has proven effective in those areas. With those replenished majorities, Pritzker and lawmakers have enacted among the most liberal reproductive health laws in the country.
They range from enshrining the procedure as "fundamental" in state law to protecting out-of-state patients and Illinois providers from legal action originating from states where the procedure is illegal. Reproductive health is an issue national Democrats have sought to center in both the 2024 presidential campaign and in federal races down the ballot. Harris has vowed to codify Roe v.
Wade into law if she wins the White House and Democrats take back full control of Congress. Though former President Donald Trump and many top Republicans have said they support the Supreme Court decision that returned the issue to the states, Democrats have warned of a national abortion ban if Republicans win power. "Let me be clear: There is no greater threat to bodily autonomy and women's right to choose than another term of Donald Trump," Conroy said.
"We must defeat him in November. In Illinois, we have fought to protect these rights and have become the beacon of reproductive freedom for the rest of the country." Amplifying that message, Lt.
Gov. Juliana Stratton declared Tuesday that Illinois is "the blueprint for this fight" on abortion. "When JB and I took office, we enshrined reproductive freedoms into state law before Roe fell because we knew that was only the beginning.
And it was," Stratton said. "We knew that Republicans would propose a national abortion ban. And they did.
"We knew that they'd come after access to birth control. And they did," she said. "We knew that they would attack IVF," and "they did.
" "Donald Trump can deny and JD Vance can scrub his website," Stratton said," referring to Trump's vice presidential running mater, "but we already know their truth." Reproductive health care issues also took front-and-center during the first night of DNC programming on Monday, with three speakers from states with abortion bans on the books warning of the potentially deadly consequences. "I can't imagine not having a choice, but today that's the reality for many women and girls across the country because of Donald Trump's abortion bans," said Hadley Duvall, a Kentucky woman who said she became pregnant when she was 12 as a result of being raped by her stepfather.
"(Trump) calls it 'a beautiful thing,'" she said. "What is so beautiful about a child having to carry her parent's child?" Amanda Zurawski, a Texas woman who sued the state after she was denied an abortion despite severe complications that made her pregnancy non-viable, described almost dying after going into premature labor. "Every time I share our story my heart breaks — for the baby girl we wanted desperately, for the doctors and nurses who couldn't help me deliver her safely, for (my husband) Josh, who feared he would lose me, too," Zurawski said.
"But I was lucky. I lived." Illinois Treasurer Mike Frerichs said Tuesday that he had "a different speech written," but addressed the topic after hearing those stories.
Frerichs mentioned that during his first marriage, he and his wife learned when she was four months pregnant that their child had anencephaly, a congenital condition where a baby is born without parts of its brain or skull. "My wife knew her child, our child, could not survive outside the womb, but they would force her to carry to term for nine months, deal with all the risks of pregnancy, dealing with the pain of knowing 'I'm going through all of this and it will be to bear a stillborn child or one that dies soon afterwards,'" Frerichs said. "That is cruel.
And that's what the Republicans are offering." Illinois political leaders promised more efforts to strengthen the state's abortion laws and to respond to actions taken by other states and the federal government. But they were noncommittal on whether to place a referendum question on the ballot that would enshrine abortion rights explicitly in the state's constitution, a step beyond protections written in state law.
The earliest this could happen is 2026. "First and foremost" on the policy agenda is electing Harris, Stratton said. "Is there more? We hope to consider more," Stratton said.
"But I think we're doing exactly what we should be, and that's leading the nation around reproductive justice and freedom." Pritzker, who founded a group to advocate for abortion rights in states where the issue is on the ballot, will lead a panel discussion on the topic on Wednesday in Chicago. Contact Brenden Moore at brenden.
[email protected] . Follow him on twitter: @brendenmoore13.
