Eight years ago, before the U.S. Supreme Court reversed course on federal protections granted in Roe v. Wade and returned questions of abortion legality to individual states, the Chicago Abortion Fund supported less than 1% of the patients it served in 2025.
Now the largest fund of its kind in the country, the organization works to meet the logistical, financial and emotional needs of women intending to access abortion in Illinois and elsewhere.
More recently, this has meant covering transportation costs for those living outside the state.
New data from the Guttmacher Institute, a pro-abortion rights research group, revealed that nearly 1 in 4 women who crossed state lines to access an abortion last year came to Illinois, making it the largest receiving state for the third year in a row.
As the number of people traveling from one state to another for abortions has increased dramatically since federal abortion rights ended in 2022, local advocates are not worried about keeping up with the demand. They’re grateful to be in a state that creates it.
“Be like Illinois,” said Megan Jeyifo, the executive director of the Chicago Abortion Fund, which helps finance abortions at every independent clinic in the state.
Jeyifo, who first volunteered with the organization when it was much smaller, takes pride in the way supporters have rallied around the fight for abortion in a “post-Roe era.”
Back in 2020, when abortion was still somewhat protected in every state, Illinois-based clinicians performed 52,780 total abortions, according to Guttmacher data. Three years later, in the first full year after the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision, that number rose to more than 93,000, with a little less than 40,000 people traveling from other states to access the procedure in Illinois during 2023.
Knowing the state could become a geographical island of expanded abortion access surrounded by more conservative states, Illinois lawmakers strategically prepared for a potential influx of abortion seekers years in advance, Jeyifo said.
Specifically, she pointed to Illinois removing its trigger ban, a stipulation that would have eliminated access when the Supreme Court eliminated federal abortion rights, all the way back in 2018.
Concurrently, some Republican-led states began to introduce stricter restrictions on when women could terminate a pregnancy, such as Texas’ 2021 six-week ban.
“At the time people were like: ‘Why are you wasting time with the trigger ban? Roe will never get overturned,’” Jeyifo recalled. “We definitely saw the writing on the wall.”
Planned Parenthood of Illinois, which works closely with the Chicago Abortion Fund, similarly took heed of the way some Southern states began tightening their abortion laws years before the federal protections ended.
Cristina Villarreal, who handles Planned Parenthood of Illinois’ external affairs, said preparing for, and adjusting to, a reality without federal abortion rights meant bolstering clinic access near the state’s borders.
In 2023, the organization opened a new clinic in Carbondale, a liberal-leaning enclave not far from Kentucky and Tennessee. As of June 2025, 90% of abortion patients seen at the Carbondale clinic had traveled from another state, according to Planned Parenthood data.
Though Planned Parenthood cited financial concerns when it opted to close four of its locations elsewhere in Illinois last year, Villarreal said the decision was aimed at reallocating resources to the places they were needed most, like Carbondale and telehealth services.
Unlike a few years back, she believes Planned Parenthood has “moved out of crisis mode” and found a way to reliably meet Illinois’ ever-changing needs.
“We did a lot of work before the Dobbs decision to be prepared and be ready,” Villarreal said. “We have learned to adapt and be flexible and be able to increase our ability to take patients and kind of bring it down when we don’t need that.”
Not everyone is satisfied with the role Illinois has carved out for itself in terms of abortion access.
For Eric Scheidler, the executive director of the Pro-Life Action League, the idea that Illinois has become “an abortion tourism state” should concern everyone, not just anti-abortion advocates like himself.
The longtime activist and father of eight feels particularly distraught by what he views as “an epidemic of unwanted abortions,” where women feel pressured to terminate a pregnancy when they lack essential resources for motherhood. He also pointed to Gov. JB Pritzker’s “pro-abortion ethos” as something that drives women to think abortion is their only option.
“I think we have to ask the question: What more could those states be doing to help those women, so that they don’t feel like their only option is to cross state lines into Illinois to get an abortion?,” Scheidler said. “But we also have to ask ourselves: “Are we comfortable being the abortion capital?”
To many pro-abortion rights advocates, the title is more than something to be comfortable with, it’s something to be proud of.
Having led the Chicago Abortion Fund through its major growth spurt over the last few years, Jeyifo revels in the notion that Illinois has formed “the gold standard” of abortion access, one she believes would be impossible without collaboration between funders, clinics and government agencies.
Since 2023, she has seen her organization’s operation budget increase from around $4.8 million per year to $14.3 million per year, which she attributes in part to the state’s role as an oasis from surrounding abortion bans. According to Jeyifo, the fund is unique in that it receives financial support at the city, county and state levels while also relying heavily on fundraisers and donations.
Despite the significant uptick in cost to keep up with the demand from out-of-state abortion seekers, Jeyifo said the Chicago Abortion Fund and others working in Illinois will continue welcoming anyone who plans to travel here.
She hopes someday they no longer need to.
“I would like to spread the work around,” she said. “I would love to see states that have leadership that is upfront and unapologetic and proud about reproductive health access, emulate what Illinois has done and come learn from us.”
