SPRINGFIELD, Illinois (LifeSiteNews) — A new report shows that Illinois continued to supply more abortions to out-of-state residents than any other individual state in 2025, even as mail-order abortion pills continue to reduce the numbers of women traveling at all to abort their babies.
The pro-abortion Guttmacher Institute’s latest report includes full-year estimates for all abortions committed by clinicians and interstate abortion travel in 2025. Illinois saw 32,000 abortions for non-Illinois residents, representing 23 percent of the 142,000 total abortions committed for women traveling across state lines last year. Live Action notes that sum represents an 18.5 percent decrease from the year before, thanks to more abortion seekers having pills shipped to their homes instead.
Planned Parenthood took credit for handling many of those visitors, with state affiliate president and CEO Adrienne White-Faines saying, “they come from Indiana, Wisconsin, Tennessee, Kentucky and Iowa.”
“At the same time, Guttmacher estimates show that while interstate travel has declined from its peak in 2023, large numbers of patients are still traveling across state lines for care,” the report says.
“As with telehealth abortion provision, out-of-state travel at such a large scale has been made possible through both policy changes and extensive [abortion] networks. In particular, abortion funds and practical support organizations have worked to ensure that patients can still access [abortion] … across state lines, despite financial and logistical barriers,” and pro-abortion states have assisted such efforts by funding women’s abortion expenses and protecting abortion funds, the report adds.
Illinois’s 32,000 travel abortions were followed by 18,000 in North Carolina, 14,000 in Kansas, 10,000 in New Mexico, and 9,000 in Virginia.
“The abortion industry in Illinois is the wild west, which is clear by these numbers,” responded Illinois Right to Life president and CEO Mary Kate Zander. “When will Pritzker and the state of Illinois start providing real accountability on behalf of vulnerable women? It’s disgusting.”
Under Democrat Gov. JB Pritzker, Illinois has been among the most aggressive states in the Union in shoring up virtually unlimited abortion. Last June, he signed legislation to ensure abortion pills remain legal in the state even if the FDA withdraws approval, and last year he celebrated “Abortion Provider Appreciation Day” with a “thank you” to “doctors, nurses, clinic staff and volunteers” involved in abortions for their “compassion,” despite Illinois abortionists’ record of putting women in emergency rooms via botched procedures, in addition to killing unborn babies.
Last August, he signed two more laws to further aid the abortion industry, one ensuring abortion pills’ availability on college campuses and another shielding abortionists from out-of-state prosecutions for helping facilitate abortions in pro-life states. In February, he announced a partnership with the Michael Reese Health Trust to form the “Prairie State Access Fund” to subsidize abortions further still. State pro-life activists also fear Pritzker is preparing a pro-abortion amendment to the state constitution.
An additional five pro-abortion proposals are currently pending before the state legislature. Taken together, they would reduce reporting on abortion pill safety data, eliminate mandatory death certificates for preborn babies younger than 20 weeks, require out-of-state foster homes to affirm abortion, make it harder for out-of-state law enforcement to access abortion-related medical records, and create an “Abortion Access Fund Grant Program” for seekers not already covered by Medicaid.
Illinois is one of 13 states currently under investigation by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office for Civil Rights for allegedly coercing health providers into covering abortion in violation of federal law.