In the nearly four months since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, Planned Parenthood of Illinois says they've seen a record number of abortion patients travel to Illinois from outside the state.
A federally protected right for nearly 50 years, abortion is now subject to a patchwork of laws that vary from state to state following the Supreme Court's Dobbs v. Jackson ruling on June 24. While abortion remains largely legally protected in Illinois, many states across the U.S. have since moved to ban abortion or severely restrict access.
In the Midwest, Missouri and Kentucky were among more than a dozen states with a trigger ban that immediately outlawed abortion with limited exceptions once Roe v. Wade was overturned.
Wisconsin has an 1849 ban that's now at the center of both a major legal challenge and the state's midterm elections. And Indiana was the first state in the U.S. to pass a new, near-total abortion ban following the Dobbs decision. That law took effect last month but was blocked by a judge one week later - its fate still unclear.
The new restrictions around the country have brought a massive influx of abortion patients to Illinois.
"In August of this year, Planned Parenthood of Illinois saw more out-of-state patients for abortion care than ever before," said PPIL's Chief Strategy and Operations Officer Kristen Schultz.
Schultz said PPIL typically sees patients from 10 to 15 different states each month, but by August, the organization had seen patients from 28 states across the country, with most coming from nearby states like Wisconsin and Ohio.
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"We’ve seen a tenfold increase in Wisconsin patients seeking abortion care in Illinois," Schulz said, adding that PPIL has seen 18 times as many patients from Kentucky, four times as many from Texas and twice as many from Indiana since Roe was overturned.
The Illinois Department of Public Health has data on abortions statewide from 1995 through 2020. It shows the total number of abortions for Illinoisans has gone down over the years, reaching as high as 49,457 in 1996 but declining to 36,174 in 2020.
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But what has risen in recent years - even before the Dobbs decision - is the number of people who came to Illinois from other states for abortions.
From 1995 through 2015, the percentage of abortion patients who came from out of state each year was steady at an average of around 8%. The proportion creeped up to 12% in 2016, 16% in 2019 and 21% in 2020 - when 9,686 people came to Illinois for abortions, per IDPH.
These days, for PPIL - which operates 17 health centers across the state as well as a telehealth program - that proportion is much higher.
"At this point nearly 30% of our abortion patients traveled in from another state," Schulz said.
"When it comes to in-state patients, Planned Parenthood of Illinois continues to see the same - and actually more in August - abortion patients from right here in Illinois than we’ve ever seen before," Schulz continued.
She said they've been planning for this for years to ensure that wait times would not increase.
"We’ve taken active steps to meet the anticipated surge of 20,000 or 30,000 additional abortion patients each year," Schulz said.
"Some of the steps that we’ve taken include building our health center in Waukegan just near the Wisconsin border, building our Flossmoor center just near the Indiana border," she said. "On Sept. 15, the day the Indiana ban first went into effect, we announced that we’ve expanded abortion services at our Champaign health center to include in-clinic abortion for the first time in addition to medication abortion."
PPIL also announced in July a partnership with Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin, in which abortion care providers from Wisconsin travel to Illinois a few days a week to expand care at the Waukegan center and across the state.
They've also staffed up to meet the heightened demand and are hiring additional physicians, nurses, medical assistants and more. Schulz said the needs of patients who are traveling are greater than the organization expected - and they've increased the number of patient navigators.
"We are getting calls from patients from out of state trying to figure out how they will get to us and how they will find childcare for their kids and how they will manage the expense of travel, and we help them with that and connect them with other additional resources," Schulz said. "But we’re also getting calls - and we did at the beginning after the Dobbs decision - of patients from Illinois, just making sure their appointment was in place and that abortion was still legal here in Illinois."
"The calls range and are very high in volume and patients are scared," she added. "They’re absolutely calling us and seeking reassurance that when they get to us, if they can get to us, that we will care for them and we absolutely will."
Schulz said PPIL has also seen a surge in volunteer applications – more than 1,700 since the Dobbs decision.
