Four years after Roe’s reversal, Illinois still a destination for women seeking abortion care
Four years since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, Illinois continues to be a refuge for women living in states where abortions are banned, recent data shows.
Planned Parenthood of Illinois said Tuesday the agency has experienced a 48% increase in abortion care patients since the court’s Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision that upset Roe on June 24, 2022.
“About 25% of our patients are traveling from another state,” PPI Chief Medical Officer Dr. Katie Sisco said Wednesday.
Sisco treats patients at Planned Parenthood centers in Aurora and Waukegan but also travels to downstate Carbondale.
That facility is “where you really see patients from all over the South. One patient will be from Alabama, the next patient will be from Arkansas — Tennessee, Kentucky, Texas, Florida, Georgia — and you’ll see all of those in just one day,” she said.
Thirteen states prohibit abortion and 10 have restrictions banning the procedure starting anywhere from six to 22 weeks into a pregnancy, according to KFF, a nonprofit health policy organization. Abortion is outright banned in Indiana and prohibited after six weeks of pregnancy in Iowa.
About 155,000 individuals left their home states for abortion care in 2024, and 35,470 of them came to Illinois, according to the Guttmacher Institute, a reproductive health research institution.
Sisco recalled a recent patient in Aurora who was 18 years and from Mississippi.
“Her grandmother drove her up; that was her support person,” she said. “Grandma was right there (all) along, holding her hand through the whole process. And that same day, getting in her car and driving her granddaughter back home.
“Sometimes patients have to come all by themselves … and maybe spend the night in order to drive home the next day,” Sisco added. “It’s really hard to be told by your state that what you’re doing is so wrong — that you can’t even access that health care in your state and so you have to go elsewhere.”
The total number of people crossing state lines for abortion procedures has decreased from nearly 170,000 in 2023 just after the ruling. For comparison, that tally was 81,000 in 2020, Guttmacher found.
The right to have an abortion is enshrined in Illinois law, and the state has worked to counter federal government measures seeking to restrict Medicaid funding for providers who offer the procedure.
In December, the state’s Department of Healthcare and Family Service provided $4 million for Medicaid family planning services enabling providers like Planned Parenthood to be reimbursed for Illinoisans’ abortions.
“Every day, I get frustrated and angry and emotional that this is still what my patients have to go through, but I’m so grateful that I’m in Illinois,” Sisco said.
The Daily Herald reached out to Illinois Right to Life and the Pro-Life Action League for comment.