SPRINGFIELD – Planned Parenthood affiliates in Illinois and Wisconsin said Thursday they have formed a partnership to expand abortion clinic services to Waukegan to help residents of Wisconsin, where services in Abortion are now prohibited.
The announcement came three weeks after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the 1973 decision in Roe v. Wade, who legalized abortion nationwide. Once the court made that decision, an 1849 Wisconsin law that criminalizes abortion automatically came back into effect.
“We opened Waukegan Health Center in 2020 in anticipation of this moment,” Jennifer Welch, president and CEO of Planned Parenthood of Illinois, said during a virtual press conference. “We expected Wisconsin to end access to abortion care as soon as Roe fell, so we were ready to give Wisconsin patients the care they needed.”
Under this arrangement, patients can still visit one of four clinics in Wisconsin to receive care before and after the procedure. But several Wisconsin clinicians, nurses and other staff are traveling to the Waukegan clinic to expand the capacity of that health center and other clinics in Illinois through telehealth.
Tanya Atkinson, president and CEO of Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin, said her organization anticipated the reversal of Roe v. Wade for years and had been working for several months to establish partnerships with out-of-state vendors.
“Despite the devastating impact of this criminal ban on abortion, we are grateful to have health care options for our patients right next door in Illinois,” she said. “Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin works on many fronts to provide patients with information, support, financial resources, and access to abortion services and aftercare.”
Atkinson noted that even before the overturning of Roe v. Wade, Wisconsin had imposed strict abortion regulations.
According to Institut Guttmacheran organization that supports abortion rights, even after the original Roe v. Wade, Wisconsin imposed a number of procedural restrictions.
These included a 24-hour waiting period and state-directed counseling that included information designed to discourage a patient from having an abortion, a ban on the use of telemedicine to administer abortive drugs; and the requirement of parental consent to perform an abortion on a minor, among others.
Illinois, on the other hand, imposes virtually no legal restrictions on access to abortion services. A 2019 law known as the Reproductive Health Act declares access to abortion services a “fundamental right” under Illinois law. And last year, lawmakers repealed what was known as the Parental Notice of Abortion Act, requiring parents of minors seeking abortions to be notified before the procedure can be carried out.
For this reason, many Wisconsin residents seeking abortions have turned to out-of-state providers, including those in Illinois. But Kristen Schultz, director of strategy and operations for the Illinois branch, said that since the overturning of Roe v. Wade on June 24, the number of Wisconsin residents traveling to Illinois for abortion services increased 10-fold.
Earlier in the week, Lieutenant Governor Juliana Stratton testified before the US Senate Judiciary Committee about the increased demand for abortion services that Illinois is seeing from residents of other states where the procedure is now either prohibited or severely restricted.
“We are not just an oasis of reproductive care, but an island,” she said, in her prepared remarks. “Here’s what it looks like: He looks like disenfranchised but determined patients from all the surrounding states, but also from as far away as Tennessee, Texas, Louisiana, Alabama and Florida.”
Capitol News Illinois is a nonprofit, nonpartisan news service covering state government and distributed to more than 400 newspapers statewide. It is funded primarily by the Illinois Press Foundation and the Robert R. McCormick Foundation.