The Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization was a gut punch to people across the country. For the first time in almost 50 years, abortion is no longer a constitutionally protected right. Accessing safe and legal abortions will be more challenging than ever, and for many, especially young, low-income women and people of color, those challenges will prove insurmountable. We should do everything we can to keep Illinois a place of refuge for Midwesterners in need of abortion care.
For many years, as Republican legislatures increasingly restricted access to abortions, women across the South and Midwest have turned to Illinois as a safe haven for abortion care. In Illinois, we’ve welcomed those people with open arms to receive the care they deserved.
In 2019, while living in Nashville, Tennessee, Illinois native Kara Saffrin became pregnant at 22 years old. She decided she did not want to carry the pregnancy to term, but the process of finding where she could have a safe abortion was incredibly difficult and convoluted. She searched online for hours for a clinic where she could receive care, as she could not find anywhere to receive the procedure in Tennessee. She knew that many of the mandated waiting periods, ultrasound viewings and other medically unnecessary requirements in neighboring states would make an already difficult situation more complicated. The burden of desperately searching for safe and legal abortion care compounded the trauma and shame she felt due to the stigma around unwanted pregnancies.
The closest location Kara could find where she could have a one-day consultation and procedure was in Aurora. So, Kara and her boyfriend drove more than 500 miles over eight hours from Nashville to Aurora so that she could terminate her pregnancy. Fortunately, Kara and her boyfriend had the financial resources, time off from work and a car to make that trip possible. Too many women across the country do not have those resources and won’t be able to travel across state lines to receive abortion care they should be able to access in their home states. While at the clinic, Kara encountered another young woman in the waiting room who shared that she and her boyfriend were trying to figure out how they would afford groceries for the week following her abortion.
Kara’s story also highlights the urgent need for us to ensure that Illinois has sufficient resources — clinic staff, locations and nearby lodging — to continue providing abortions for Illinois and out-of-state patients who are forced to travel for abortion care.
This July, Planned Parenthood Illinois saw more out-of-state patients than ever before. Before the Dobbs decision was released, PPIL typically treated about 100 out-of-state patients per month. In the week following that Supreme Court ruling, more than 800 people from out of state sought out PPIL for abortion care while the organization continued to provide care for Illinoisans.
Planned Parenthood clinics in Illinois typically receive patients from 12 to 15 other states, with the most patients coming from Wisconsin and Indiana. Since the Dobbs decision, they’ve seen patients from 30 states, with most coming from Wisconsin and Ohio, two states where new abortion bans are in place. They’ve also seen a 50% increase in patients like Kara who are coming from Tennessee.
While abortion wait times in Illinois have not dramatically increased, we must work to ensure that everyone is able to continue receiving care in a timely manner. Women’s health clinics will need more resources to do that. Of course, Planned Parenthood also provides other vital reproductive health care services, such as primary care and family planning, that will now be harder or even impossible to access in states with abortion bans.
Even before the abortion access crisis, we faced a maternal mortality crisis. We know that the maternal mortality crisis is worsening, especially for Black women and other women of color. Forced birth will disproportionately affect the very same people who are already at increased risk of pregnancy and birth-related complications and death.
To mitigate that risk, we need to ensure access to the full spectrum of reproductive health care — including providing 12 months of postpartum Medicaid coverage in every single state, ensuring access to birth control, expanding access to telehealth services, protecting patients’ private health data and preserving the right to use abortion pills that can be provided by mail.
We can also support wraparound services to help those who will now face hours and hundreds of miles on the road to receive abortion care. Kara shared her story to help raise awareness about the economic, physical and mental health consequences of forced pregnancy, unsafe abortion and, in her case, forced travel. She hopes that by sharing her story, she can inspire others to share theirs, thereby helping reduce the stigma and shame around abortion, as it affects hundreds of thousands of patients every year. Shared personal experience can help others understand the vast impact and critical importance of safe and accessible abortion for everyone.
There are an infinite number of reasons a person decides to have an abortion. None of them is anyone’s business except the patient’s and her doctor’s. The bottom line is that abortion care is lifesaving care, and Illinois is situated to act as a safe haven for that care. We have to do everything we can to protect access to abortion and reproductive care in Illinois and to reduce stigma. Lives are on the line.
U.S. Rep. Robin Kelly represents Illinois’ 2nd Congressional District. She is chair of the Congressional Black Caucus Health Braintrust and co-founder of the Caucus on Black Women and Girls. Kara Saffrin is an Illinois resident.
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