In a landmark decision in 2022, the U.S. Supreme Court held that the Constitution does not confer a right to an abortion.

Since then, the two abortion clinics in Champaign, Ill., have become destinations for thousands of pregnant women, especially from Indiana.

“Forty percent of the patients we serve in Champaign are out-of-state patients, and 84% of those, the vast majority are from Indiana,” Stacey McKeever, regional director of clinical operations with Planned Parenthood of Illinois, said in an interview with CU-CitizenAccess.org. 

There are currently 36 abortion clinics in Illinois offering in-person services, according to Plan C, a U.S.‑based nonprofit public health organization. Two clinics, Planned Parenthood and Equity Clinic, are located in the City of Champaign.

The two major providers both said Indiana residents account for the largest share of out-of-state patients, and Kentucky is the second-largest.

McKeever also said the Planned Parenthood clinic in Champaign is the third-busiest facility in Illinois, following the Near North in central Chicago and Aurora facilities:

“Since the overturning of Roe v. Wade, a giant tidal wave of patients has been coming to us for abortion services. Immediately after Roe was overturned, we saw that, and it hasn’t abated. Since that time, we’ve seen about a 48% increase in out-of-state patients coming to us for abortions. And that’s a big increase from before. It was like 3% to 5% in Champaign before.” 

Currently, Planned Parenthood is the largest abortion provider in Illinois, with 13 clinics across the state. It operates five facilities in Chicago health centers, four in Chicago suburb areas, three in central Illinois and one in southern Illinois, according to its website.  

The Equity Clinic, located in Champaign, Ill., said it estimates about 60% of out-of-state abortion patients are from Indiana.

“We serve about 100 patients from Indiana each month. Kentucky ranks second-highest in the out-of-patient abortion number,” Keith Reisinger-Kindle, president of Equity Clinic, said in an interview.

The surge in patients traveling to Illinois clinics is largely tied to a broader shift in abortion access across the United States following a landmark Supreme Court decision. 

In Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, issued in June 2022, the court overturned Roe v. Wade and eliminated the federal constitutional right to abortion, returning the authority to regulate the procedure to individual states. In the months that followed, many states moved quickly to restrict or ban abortion.

Indiana has one of the strictest abortion laws in the country. The state enacted a near‑total abortion ban in August 2022 following the U.S. Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision. After months of court challenges, the Indiana Supreme Court upheld the ban in June 2023, and it has remained largely in effect since then.

Under the current law, abortion is illegal at every stage of pregnancy, permitted only in narrowly defined circumstances: 

• When a physician determines it is necessary to save the pregnant person’s life or prevent a serious risk to their physical health
• When a pregnancy results from rape or incest and the abortion occurs early in pregnancy
• When the fetus is diagnosed with a lethal anomaly that will result in death shortly after birth

Even in those cases, the law imposes tight procedural and facility requirements.

All standalone abortion clinics in Indiana closed by mid‑2023, including Planned Parenthood centers in Indianapolis, Bloomington, Lafayette and Merrillville. Hospitals and surgical centers owned by hospitals are the only places legally permitted to provide abortions. Many hospitals have chosen not to offer the service even when exceptions apply, according to a press release by Planned Parenthood.

Abortion numbers plummet in Indiana

Terminated pregnancy reports by the Indiana Department of Health show a decrease of thousands — about a 97% drop — for in‑state abortions after the ban took full effect. 

In 2024, only 146 abortions were reported statewide, nearly all falling under the law’s exceptions. The year before, Indiana reported 4,673 abortions statewide, state reports showed. 

The number was greater because Indiana’s near‑total abortion ban was not fully in effect for most of that year, with 3,862 abortions performed in the first half of the year.

In 2024, Indiana residents received abortion care in neighboring states, including 8,010 patients in Illinois, 900 in Ohio and 1,170 in Michigan. 

Similar to Indiana, Kentucky enforced a near‑total abortion ban in 2022 that allows the procedure only in cases of medical emergencies to save a pregnant person’s life or prevent serious, permanent injury. 

The law applies to providers, not patients, and does not restrict residents from traveling out of state for abortion care. With no clinics operating in Kentucky, most patients who need abortion services must leave the state to receive care.

On average, Parent Parenthood has seen an increase of 25% in overall abortion numbers, which account for both in-state and out-of-state patients, regional director McKeever said.

On June 24, 2022, the Supreme Court of the United States issued its decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, overturning both Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey. The ruling held that the Constitution does not guarantee a right to abortion, returning regulatory authority to individual states. 

The Dobbs ruling fundamentally ended nearly 50 years of federal abortion protection and shifted power to the states, triggering immediate legal and access changes across the U.S.

In contrast to many neighboring states such as Indiana and Kentucky that moved quickly to restrict abortion access after the decision, Illinois adopted a markedly different approach. 

The state reaffirmed abortion as a protected right under the Reproductive Health Act (RHA) and positioned itself as a critical access point for reproductive healthcare in the Midwest.

“Our shield in Illinois is built differently than neighboring states by design. Here, we wanted to focus on protecting folks in the state, both who live here and travel here, and their access to reproductive care,” Illinois State Representative Kelly Cassidy, who has been the primary legislative architect behind the act, said in an email to CU-CitizenAccess.

Cassidy also mentioned the importance of having partners, like the Chicago Abortion Fund and the Midwest Access Coalition, that assist people seeking care to travel to Illinois. 

“We also did the work ahead of time by passing the RHA, so when the Dobbs decision finally came, we had a strong firewall built around Illinois and its access to reproductive care,” Cassidy said.

The act received criticism from both Democrats and Republicans, she said.

“Some questioned the need for the RHA at the time we were working on passing it, but we created this legislation specifically so the right to reproductive care in Illinois did not rely on the fate of Roe v. Wade, given an increasingly conservative Supreme Court taking shape,” Cassidy said. “Roe then fell only three years later.”

Out-of-state abortions rose in Illinois after overturn

The number of abortions performed in Illinois increased more than 50% between 2020 and 2023, rising from about 46,000 to more than 72,000 procedures, according to the Illinois Department of Public Health.

In 2025, the Guttmacher Institute reported Illinois provided 32,490 abortions to out-of-state residents, accounting for almost one quarter of the 142,000 people nationwide who traveled across state lines for care that year. 

The Guttmacher Institute is a reproductive health research and policy organization that supports abortion rights and independently tracks abortion trends using provider surveys and statistical estimates. The institute’s Monthly Abortion Provision Study is a data project launched in 2023 to provide estimates of abortion provision in the U.S. after the end of federal abortion protections. 

Illinois lags in reporting — the most recent abortion data released by the Illinois Department of Public Health covers 2023 but was published in 2025.

A comparison of the two sources reveals a notable difference in reported figures from 2023, particularly in the overall number of abortions occurring in Illinois and the volume of patients traveling from out of state. 

A representative of the Guttmacher Institute said in an email that discrepancies in its numbers and state numbers are common, but it can’t pinpoint the exact reasons: 

“Broadly, there is substantial variation between states in the completeness of abortion data collected by state departments of health, and it historically hasn’t been uncommon for abortion data published by individual states to be somewhat lower than other sources. Illinois also changed some aspects of how it collects data from providers in 2023.”

Worries mount over patients being tracked

Illinois now only reports aggregated data showing total abortions for Illinois residents compared with out-of-state patients. The state public health department announced it will stop reporting detailed geographic data, such as county-level abortion numbers and specific states where out-of-state patients come from.

The revision was driven by concerns that detailed data could be used to identify or track patients, especially those traveling from restrictive states, and expose providers or patients to legal or political risks after the Dobbs ruling.

A policy analysis report by Guttmacher found that even anonymized data such as zip code or demographics can potentially reveal identities, especially in smaller communities, potentially exposing patients and providers to harassment, stigma or legal investigation.

The Illinois Department of Public Health said in May 2026 that it is still in the process of compiling abortion data for 2024 and 2025 and has not yet released updated figures. In an email to CU-CitizenAccess.org, the agency said it would be able to address questions once the data are finalized and made public.

The Guttmacher representative also said the number of estimated abortions in Illinois from the institute’s monthly study matches almost exactly the numbers produced by #WeCount, another data collection effort organized by the Society for Family Planning that uses a different methodology. It estimates around 92,000 abortions occurred in Illinois in 2023.

Illinois provided nearly 23% of all abortions for people traveling across state lines for care in 2024, more than anywhere else in the U.S., Guttmacher reported.

The shift in where patients access abortion care is driven by bans in neighboring states. Bans are not only in Indiana and Kentucky, but also Missouri and Wisconsin. 

After the Dobbs ruling, Missouri’s trigger law took effect, banning nearly all abortions except in medical emergencies. That ban remained in place for more than two years, forcing Missouri residents to travel out of state for care. 

In November 2024, Missouri voters approved a constitutional amendment protecting abortion rights up to fetal viability, which refers to the stage of pregnancy, typically around 23 to 24 weeks, when a fetus can survive outside the womb. Clinics resumed providing procedural abortion care in early 2025. 

However, the state’s abortion laws continue to be contested in court, and access remains limited and unstable, prompting many patients to seek care in neighboring states, including Illinois.

Wisconsin providers stopped offering abortions immediately after the ruling out of concern that an 1849 criminal abortion statute could now be enforced.

Clinics remained closed for roughly 15 months, from June 2022 to September 2023, until providers resumed services following lower‑court rulings clarifying that the 1849 law did not apply to modern, consensual abortion care.

While abortion is legal in Wisconsin, strict gestational limits, mandatory waiting periods, a ban on telehealth and limited clinic availability continue to restrict access, prompting many residents to seek care out of state, including in Illinois.

Early roots of abortion clinics in Champaign

Abortion services in Champaign County originated within family planning and maternal health clinics, which later expanded their services as abortion became legal. A clinic affiliated with Planned Parenthood opened in Champaign in 1940, according to the organization’s website.

At the time, it operated under strict social norms. It served only married, low-income women and faced resistance from the local medical community.

After Roe v. Wade legalized abortion nationwide, Planned Parenthood expanded services, including abortion. 

However, access in Champaign County remained limited compared to larger cities like Chicago. Comprehensive abortion access was also inconsistent, especially for surgical procedures.

In 2017, an abortion facility in Champaign named Women’s Health Practice was the target of an attempted bombing. The device was removed without mishap by the police. The clinic was closed soon after and never reopened.

On the day the Indiana abortion ban went into effect in 2022, Planned Parenthood of Illinois announced the expansion of abortion care options at its existing Champaign facility. The facility was renovated in order to add in-clinic abortion services for the first time to its options for patients to provide care options in closer proximity to people traveling from Indiana and southwest Ohio, according to a press release.

According to Planned Parenthood, a first-trimester procedural abortion can cost up to approximately $800, with the average cost at Planned Parenthood facilities around $600. Medication abortion, commonly known as the abortion pill, can also cost up to about $800, though the average cost at Planned Parenthood is typically closer to $580.

Procedural abortion and surgical abortion refer to the same in-clinic method used to terminate a pregnancy that uses suction and sometimes instruments to evacuate the uterus rather than medicine: 

“To have an abortion performed in a health center is called a procedural abortion. Surgical abortion is an outdated and misleading term, as there is no surgery involved. The other outdated term is in-clinic, although that is more acceptable,” said Mary Jane Wolski, director of communications and marketing at PPIL.

The method is effective and works almost every time it is done, according to Planned Parenthood’s website.

But as the numbers show, the biggest shift in Champaign’s abortion scene came after Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization. 

The Champaign Planned Parenthood clinic resumed surgical abortions in 2022 after renovations and expanded capacity to serve more patients, including out-of-state travelers.

Following that, Equity Clinic opened in 2023.

Abortion hubs in Illinois

According to a Stacker analysis using national clinic location data, Champaign County emerged as one of Illinois’ most geographically accessible counties for abortion care after services expanded in late 2022. 

A review of the geographic distribution of abortion clinics shows northern Illinois holds at least 26 facilities, the highest concentration of clinics in the state, according to Guttmacher Institute. The Chicago metropolitan area alone hosts 15 of these clinics. 

These clinics serve an influx of patients from northern neighboring states like Wisconsin, Ohio, Indiana and Michigan. 

“For the northern part of the region, we see most of the out-of-state patients from Wisconsin, after Indiana,” Wolski said. 

There are at least six clinics in the southern part of Illinois, with three in the Carbondale area and three others in the Metro East area, including East St. Louis, Fairview Heights and Granite City. 

“When we opened the clinic, we strategically picked the location, keeping in mind that it would likely serve people coming from multiple states,” Andrea Gallegos, manager of Alamo Women’s Clinic in Carbondale, said in an interview with CU-CitizenAccess.

She said Alamo Women’s Clinic is a critical access point for neighboring state patients like Tennessee, Missouri, Arkansas, Louisiana, Indiana and Mississippi. 

“We see the highest number travel from Tennessee,” she said. 

Although Illinois does not border Tennessee, Gallegos said that Carbondale is easily accessible by car, making it a practical destination for many patients. 

“For example, the drive from Memphis to Carbondale is about 170 miles, which typically takes two and a half to three hours,” she said — short enough for many patients facing limited alternatives closer to home.

Champaign clinics scale up as out‑of‑state demand surges

Clinic president Reisinger-Kindle said the Equity Clinic can handle many more patients:

“We are currently at probably 50% capacity. We still have lots of room to grow. Our organization was set up in a way that allowed for significant growth, and we started small just because we were new, and are growing and expanding services intentionally and so we are continuing that process.”

Originally from Ohio, he said he chose Champaign for his clinic because he saw a growing gap in abortion access as clinics closed and patient demand surged after states enacted new restrictions. 

Before the Dobbs ruling, people in central Illinois largely had to travel to Chicago or the St. Louis suburbs, and those locations became increasingly overwhelmed — especially with out‑of‑state patients. 

Champaign, he said, is an easy destination for people traveling from multiple regions, making it a practical location to expand access.

“90% of my patients are out-of-state,” he said.

At the Equity Clinic, two providers and seven team members, including nurses, technicians and managers, travel from and live outside the state of Illinois to deliver care. He said the clinic faces no shortage of equipment, supplies or other resources.

“Ninety-eight percent of the things that we are using on a day-to-day basis are things that all healthcare clinics are using more or less,” he said. “And so it’s not like we rely on a special supply of anything.”

McKeever from Planned Parenthood said the Champaign clinic had been preparing for this moment for a long time and has the capacity to serve the patients who need them, whether they are from the Champaign-Urbana area or from out of state: 

“We basically doubled our clinical capacity at our Champaign Health Center, as well as at a number of other health centers to meet the patient need and to meet this moment. We have renovated our whole first floor at the Champaign clinic. We now offer procedural abortion services. We doubled the size of our staff so we have the capacity to see the patients who need us.”

Most of the staff at Planned Parenthood in the Champaign area are from the Champaign-Urbana area. However, like Equity Clinic, Planned Parenthood also has out-of-state providers.  

“We have three abortion providers who travel from Indiana,” McKeever said. “They are excellent, well-trained, caring providers, and they cannot take care of patients in their home state. And so they do travel to us on a monthly basis to care for patients, often patients who are from Indiana, as well.”

Telehealth growing in popularity

Telehealth allows patients to consult with physicians remotely and have abortion medication mailed to them. 

According to Guttmacher, medication abortion is the most common and popular method in the U.S., and it has lessened the need for out-of-state travel in some instances.

However, the Illinois Telehealth Act establishes that telehealth care is legally considered to occur at the patient’s location, requiring the patient to be located in Illinois for care provided under Illinois licensure.

Planned Parenthood in Champaign offers telehealth services, including medication abortion, as long as they are in Illinois.

“We know of patients who will cross the border, do the appointment in their car, pick up their medications, and then are able to drive back home,” McKeever said. “So that’s an option, both for in-state and out-of-state patients seeking care.”