* WBEZ…

Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker pledged to remove a barrier to abortion for people in prison after a WBEZ investigation found incarcerated people had to pay for the procedure and the wages of the correctional officer required to accompany them to appointments outside the prison.

“Moving forward, abortion procedures and their associated expenses will not be covered by incarcerated women,” IDOC spokesperson Naomi Puzello wrote in a statement announcing the policy change. “Those who previously paid for expenses will be reimbursed.”

Advocates for abortion rights were surprised and elated. “With access to abortion care under attack across the nation, Illinois should ensure that every person in need of abortion care, including those in the custody of the Illinois Department of Corrections, has unfettered access to this critical health care,” said Emily Hirsch, a legal fellow at the ACLU of Illinois. “We applaud the Governor’s Office for taking an important step toward that goal.”

Puzello said the new guidelines were implemented immediately and that Wexford, the company that is contracted by the state to provide healthcare in prisons, and all impacted facilities have been notified of the change. However, the corrections department did not specify how access will be ensured, how reimbursements will be provided or how incarcerated pregnant people are being made aware of their rights.

* New York Times…

Although the WeCount report did not document where interstate abortion travelers came from, the states with large increases were located near states that banned abortions. (Not all clinics gave this information to the group when they shared the number of abortions they had provided.) North Carolina, Kansas, Colorado and Illinois had the largest increases by percent. But some women did travel outside of their region: New York, which does not border any states that banned abortion, had a substantial increase. […]

Though clinics in states bordering those with bans have been struggling to see all the patients who come to them — some cannot schedule appointments because they are overbooked — many had been able to expand access before Roe fell, in preparation for the surge in demand.

Illinois had the biggest increase in the number of abortions: 2,710 more in July and August than in April and May. Clinics there had already been serving many patients from Missouri, where abortion was largely inaccessible before Roe’s overturning. Two of them, Hope Clinic for Women and the Planned Parenthood in Fairview Heights, Ill., had prepared for the post-Roe surge by expanding their hours and clinic space, hiring more doctors and creating a hotline to help patients with travel logistics.

The data also shows a small increase in abortions provided through telemedicine providers who do not have brick-and-mortar clinics. These were made possible last December when the Food and Drug Administration legalized telemedicine abortions. These abortions are legally available in only some states, and accounted for 5 percent of all abortions in August, the new data shows.

* Axios…

A new analysis shows that Illinois protects access to abortion services and has seen an uptick since the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision in April.

* Our state had one of the largest increases in abortions from April to August, at 28%.
* Only three had a higher increase: North Carolina (37%), Kansas (36%) and Colorado (33%).

The big picture: In August, abortion services became completely unavailable in Alabama, Arkansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Texas and Wisconsin.

* Since the Dobbs decision, there were 5,270 fewer abortions in July and 5,400 fewer in August nationally.
* In states with bans or severe restrictions, there were 7,870 fewer abortions in July and 8,040 fewer in August for a total of 15,910.

* Jezebel…

Earlier this month, the Springfield News-Leader reported the story of a Missouri woman named Mylissa Farmer who was forced to travel to Illinois after being denied a life-saving abortion due to Missouri’s near-total abortion ban and its ambiguous exception for threats to the life of the pregnant person. Farmer had reached out to the office of her state senator for help—and instead, they referred her to an anti-abortion crisis pregnancy center and promised to contact the Republican state attorney general, Eric Schmitt, who also happens to be running for U.S. Senate. Farmer says she never heard back.

Shortly after sharing her story, Farmer—who once identified as “pretty pro-life”—appeared in a damning ad for Schmitt’s Democratic opponent, Trudy Busch Valentine, highlighting Schmitt’s extremist stances on abortion. And on Friday, Missouri House Rep. Crystal Quade (D) sent a letter to the attorney general’s office alleging that the state had launched an investigation into Farmer and Freeman Hospital—which had ruled that Farmer’s pregnancy wasn’t viable—and requesting records and transparency.

On Monday, a spokesperson for Missouri’s Department of Health and Senior Services (DHSS) confirmed in an email to Jezebel that the department “does have an ongoing EMTALA investigation underway, as authorized by CMS [Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services] on October 20, regarding the situation you’ve described at Freeman Hospital in Joplin.” In a follow-up email, the spokesperson specified that DHSS is investigating the hospital and not Farmer, specifically.

In Quade’s letter, the Democratic lawmaker alleges that Schmitt sent several cease and desist letters to Missouri television stations that aired the Busch Valentine ad featuring Farmer—and that the state then opened a retaliatory investigation into the hospital that cared for Farmer as the ads continued to air.

* 55th House District candidates …

[Park Ridge Republican Mike Lupo] said his experience of finding out that his son would be born with significant health problems informed his stance on abortion. He said he knew “what’s right for one family is not right for another” and would support abortion laws as written in Illinois.

“While our decision unwaveringly was to have our son, I feel and understand the difficulty of this decision for others,” he said. “It’s a decision that doesn’t come without consequence.”

Lupo then took a swipe at [Rep. Marty Moylan, D-Des Plaines], saying his campaign had sent out misleading mail to voters that called him a danger to reproductive access.

Moylan said that he was “100% pro choice. I believe in a woman’s right to choose.” He added that he stood by the campaign mailers he had sent out about Lupo.

* WCIA…

While abortion rights remain protected in Illinois, Budzinski supports keeping them safe at the federal level and said if a national abortion ban were to go into effect, it could impact people in Illinois.

“If a national abortion ban actually is put forward by House Republicans, and they take control of the House, those same protections that women in Illinois have today would also be affected and rolled back,” Budzinski said.

Deering does not support a national abortion ban and said it’s up to individual states to decide whether to restrict abortion access.

“If I’m going to be an advocate for making it a state’s issue, I’m not going to support a national ban,” Deering said.

* The Guardian…

All Steven knew was what time and where. A part-time pilot from the Chicago area, he was picking up a total stranger in his single-engine plane, a passenger who needed to fly more than a thousand miles, across state lines, from the midwest to the east coast.

“Within 15, 20 minutes of arriving and meeting the person, we were in the plane and I got the engine fired up, ready to go,” he said. […]

The passenger was seeking reproductive health services and needed to travel to a state where they could access them. Steven is just one of hundreds of pilots across the US, who have been volunteering the use of their small planes to fly people seeking abortions and other services from states that have outlawed it to states that haven’t.

The effort to connect volunteer pilots with patients is led by Elevated Access, a non-profit organization based out of Illinois. It was founded in April in response to a growing number of women being forced to embark on expensive and time-consuming journeys in attempts to obtain abortions

* Fox 32 News…

“Make no mistake about it, abortion is on the ballot in November,” said Jennifer Welch, Chair of the Planned Parenthood Illinois Action PAC.

The nationwide campaign is in response to the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade, which had protected abortion rights for nearly 50 years.

While Democrats, nationwide, received a boost in the polls earlier this summer, momentum is now fading with two weeks until the midterm election.

“Abortion as a topic has been down in the polls, compared to issues like the economy, inflation, even immigration and crime. Some of those things that Republicans have focused on,” said Francesca Chambers of USA Today.

* Eater Chicago…

Midterm elections are fast approaching and abortion rights are quite literally on the ballot in a number of states, following the Supreme Court’s recent decision to overturn Roe v. Wade. Experts have documented the impact abortion bans have on women’s participation in the labor force, and their findings have inspired James Beard Award-winning chef Beverly Kim (Parachute, Wherewithall).

“It’s very difficult to raise a child in this industry because of the lack of support systems both locally and nationally,” says Kim, a mother of three. “We’re already fighting for healthcare benefits, parental leave, and livable wages. Having that access and choice is a really important matter, it’s a puzzle piece that helps narrow the gap of gender disparity [in hospitality.”

In 2020, Kim co-founded the Abundance Setting, a Chicago nonprofit that supports advancement for mothers working in the hospitality industry. Under her group’s banner, Kim has assembled an all-star lineup of chefs for “Love is on the Menu,” a benefit dinner supporting the Chicago Abortion Fund (CAF), a local nonprofit that provides financial, logistical, and emotional support for abortion patients throughout the Midwest. The dinner on Tuesday, November 15, features a five-course meal from Top Chef alums Stephanie Izard (Girl & the Goat), Joe Flamm (Rose Mary), Damarr Brown (Virtue), plus Jason Hammel (Lula Cafe), Tayler Ploshehanski (Wherewithall), Kim and husband (and fellow Beard Award winner) Johnny Clark, and Los Angeles’ Mei Lin (Daybird). Tickets ($275) have already sold out, but hopefuls can request add their names to the waitlist via Resy.

“Everybody loves someone who has had an abortion, whether they know it or not,” says Kim. “Bringing people together around the dinner table helps to soften the dialogue, it destigmatizes [an experience] that is pretty widespread so we don’t have to whisper about it.”