Illinois remains abortion ‘safe haven’ for out-of-state patients in 2025, report shows

Illinois, by far, remained the most popular destination nationally among patients who had to cross state lines to obtain abortion services in 2025, according to a new report from a prominent abortion-rights organization

Illinois-based providers performed nearly one out of every four abortions for patients seeking the procedure outside of their home state, often as a result of outright abortion bans or prohibitive restrictions where they live.

The data from the Guttmacher Institute shows no other state came close to Illinois in terms of volume last year, with providers here performing the procedure at a rate nearly double the state with the next highest level of abortions on out-of-state patients, North Carolina.

Despite seeing fewer abortions overall, Illinois being the go-to state for out-of-state people seeking abortions has been a relatively stable occurrence since 2023, a year after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned its longstanding Roe v. Wade decision that affirmed abortion rights.

“They come from Indiana, Wisconsin, Tennessee, Kentucky and Iowa,” said Adrienne White-Faines, president and CEO of Planned Parenthood of Illinois. “These are neighboring states that also tend to have some limitations and restrictions on abortion care.”

With regard to abortion access, Illinois stands out from those states.

Since two-term Democratic Gov. JB Pritzker took office in 2019, he has moved to preserve and strengthen access to abortion rights in Illinois even as the U.S. Supreme Court embraced tighter restrictions on the procedure and gave states authority to impose total bans.

The state’s billionaire governor also has helped fund abortion-rights initiatives in Ohio, Florida, Missouri, Virginia and four other states through a tax-exempt organization he created called Think Big America.

Pritzker's office did not offer an immediate response to the Guttmacher analysis on Friday.

In 2025, 32,490 abortions were performed on out-of-state patients by Illinois providers, Guttmacher reported.

That figure is down from 39,890 abortions on out-of-state patients in 2023.

Last year's total amounted to almost 23% of the 142,310 people who left their home states in order to obtain abortions.

White-Faines said patient data from 2024 to 2025 from her organization’s clinics across the state bear out that pattern.

At Planned Parenthood’s Carbondale facility, she said 90% of patients receiving abortions came from Tennessee and Kentucky, states that ban abortions except in instances where a pregnant person’s life is endangered.

In Waukegan, 46% percent of patients obtaining abortions at the organization’s facility were from Wisconsin. The legality of abortion services in that state was not resolved until a Wisconsin Supreme Court ruling in mid-2025 invalidated an 1800s-era ban on the procedure that kicked in when Roe v. Wade was overturned.

And at Planned Parenthood’s Champaign offices, 48% of patients were from Indiana, where abortions are banned except in cases of rape, incest and fetal abnormalities or to save the pregnant person’s life.

“They know that Illinois is a safe-haven state, and they can get access to quality, evidence-based medicine, regardless of the type of care that they desire,” she said. “Whether it's a medical or procedural abortion, they can get easy access to that.”

Anti-abortion advocates, who have had little success with their agenda at the Democratic-led statehouse, said the new data underscores the need to regulate and license abortion providers, something they say now does not occur under Illinois law.

“The abortion industry in Illinois is the wild west, which is clear by these numbers,” said Mary Kate Zander, president and CEO of Illinois Right to Life. “When will Pritzker and the state of Illinois start providing real accountability on behalf of vulnerable women? It's disgusting."

The report also showed an overall decrease in the number of patients traveling for abortion care nationwide, but the number of people seeking telehealth appointments for abortion care has increased in states where restrictions on the procedure are tight.