(CNN) Democratic Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker signed a sweeping abortion access protection bill into law Wednesday.

"Today we proudly proclaim that in this state, we trust women," Pritzker said at a bill signing event at the Chicago Cultural Center. "And in Illinois we guarantee as a fundamental right a woman's right to choose."

The bill's signage comes as part of a wave of Democratic states opting to codify abortion protections as a slew of Republican states push forward bills restricting abortion access. Lawmakers have pushed such restrictions in an effort to force a potential legal challenge of the landmark Supreme Court Roe V. Wade decision that legalized abortion nationwide in 1973.

The Illinois bill, effective immediately, protects an individual's "fundamental right to make autonomous decisions about one's own reproductive health," including to continue a "pregnancy and give birth or to have an abortion."

The bill repeals the Illinois Abortion Law of 1975, which punished doctors for abortions not deemed "necessary," as well as the the state's Partial-birth Abortion Ban Act. It also establishes "that a fertilized egg, embryo, or fetus does not have independent rights under the law, of this State."

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