After the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the landmark Roe v. Wade ruling in 2022, the following year Illinois had 37,300 abortion patients who traveled from other states to have the procedure, according to a study and the New York Times.
The figure was 41 percent of the 90,540 abortions performed in Illinois in 2023.
In 2019, just 8,500 abortion patients traveled to Illinois from six states, including Wisconsin, Iowa, Missouri, Indiana, Kentucky and Tennessee.
But in Illinois 37,300 abortion patients in 2023 came from 15 states, including six Southern states, which ban the procedure, according to the study conducted with the Guttmacher Institute, a research organization that supports abortion rights.
Three states had higher percentages of out-of-state residents who received the procedure in 2023. New Mexico was the highest at 71 percent, followed by Kansas at 69 percent and Washington, D.C. at 53 percent.
The study shows that Texas, which has one of the strictest laws in the country, had more residents travel to another state for an abortion. According to the study, more than 14,000 Texas patients crossed the border into New Mexico for an abortion last year. An additional 16,000 left Southern states bound for Illinois. And nearly 12,000 more traveled north from South Carolina and Georgia to North Carolina.
Overall, there were 1,010,700 abortions in all 50 states in 2023, according to the study. About 171,000 or 17 percent of the patients traveled to another state to have the procedure. According to the study, out-of-state travel for abortions more than doubled in 2023, compared with 2019 and made up nearly a fifth of recorded procedures.
The U.S. Supreme Court struck down Roe v. Wade in 2022, ruling that the Constitution was not written to give federal protection to a woman’s right to have an abortion. The ruling left abortion rights up to the states.
Currently, 14 states ban abortions, including six Southern states. Abortions are legal in Illinois, which continues to draw residents from states that either ban abortions or have some restrictions on the procedure.
After the Supreme Court stripped away federal protection of abortion rights, Governor JB Pritzker immediately signed new laws that expanded abortion access in Illinois. He also launched Think Big America, a national campaign to place abortion rights measures on the ballot in cities across the country. President Joe Biden has made abortion rights a central topic in his 2024 presidential campaign for a second term.
Abortion rights activists were concerned that with Roe v. Wade Black women would be affected the most. Black women are among the most loyal voters in the Democratic Party. Historically, they have had the highest abortion rates among ethnic groups in the U.S.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, in 2019, Black women accounted for 38.4 percent of 629,898 abortions that year.
Last week, the Supreme Court rejected a case where opponents sought to ban the abortion pill mifepristone from being mailed to individuals without an in-person doctor visit. Illinois has invested upwards of $23 million into expanding abortion access and reproductive health care since 2022. Providers in the state have extended clinic hours and increased staffing and the availability of hospital-based abortion care.
