Illinois continues to treat the most out-of-state patients seeking abortions compared to every other state in the country, a new report on national abortion trends found.
Illinois provided 23% of all abortions for people traveling across state lines for care in 2024, more than anywhere else in the U.S., according to the report from the Guttmacher Institute, a research and policy organization that supports abortion rights.
Since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe vs. Wade in 2022, Illinois has become a major haven for people seeking abortion care in the Midwest and the South. Before the ruling, a small percentage of abortions were provided to out-of-state residents.
But that figure has sharply and steadily risen in the years since, especially as states both near and far enact restrictive laws and near-total bans on abortions. In Indiana, abortion was completely banned, with very limited exceptions, in 2023. Last summer, Iowa passed ban on abortions after six weeks of pregnancy.
Last year, 35,000 abortions were provided to out-of-state residents in Illinois, representing 39% of all abortions performed in the state.
“Illinois is carrying a staggering share of the national need for abortion care,” Chicago Abortion Fund’s Executive Director Megan Jeyifo said in a statement. “Last year, [Chicago Abortion Fund] took over 16,000 calls from people in 41 states, and we didn’t turn anyone away who was relying on Illinois for care.”
Before Roe was overturned, Planned Parenthood of Illinois only saw 3%-5% of patients who traveled from outside Illinois, Tonya Tucker, interim president of Planned Parenthood of Illinois, said in a statement. But now, nearly a quarter of the organization’s abortion patients are from elsewhere.
“Since the Supreme Court overturned Roe in 2022, Planned Parenthood of Illinois has experienced a 47% increase in overall abortion care patients,” Tucker said.
The numbers are higher at the organization’s clinic in Carbondale, where 90% of patients are from another state. The majority of those patients come from Tennessee and Kentucky.
“It’s clear that abortion bans and restrictions do not lessen the need for abortion care, it only makes it more difficult for people to get the care they need,” she said.
Planned Parenthood of Illinois recently closed clinics in Chicago’s Englewood neighborhood and Ottawa, Decatur and Bloomington, as it continues to deal with financial issues.
The Guttmacher report found that people not only come to Illinois for abortions more than other states, but the number of abortions provided in Illinois was more than twice the number for the next most popular state, North Carolina.
According to the report, the states with the highest number of out-of-state abortion patients in 2024 were the same four as in 2023: Illinois, North Carolina, Kansas and New Mexico.
Overall, despite states like Florida and South Carolina passing near-total bans on abortions, the number of abortions provided in the U.S. remained stable from 2023 to 2024, increasing by less than 1%.
“The latest abortion travel data are a clear reminder that the impact of a state’s abortion policies extends far beyond its borders,” Kimya Forouzan, Guttmacher Institute’s principal state policy adviser, said in a statement.