* St. Louis Public Radio…

For months, abortion providers in the Metro East have described a surge in patients since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, the 1973 decision that legalized abortion nationwide.

A national report from the Society for Family Planning has documented that increase. It notes that Illinois clinics performed nearly 30% more abortions in August than in April, even as the total number of procedures fell across the United States. […]

The group began compiling the list in early 2022. It found that Illinois providers performed nearly 7,000 abortions in August, up from 5,400 in May and April and nearly 6,000 in June.

The jump in abortions performed by Illinois clinics comes as states in the south-central region of the United States saw a 96% decrease in the number of abortions between April and August. Many patients are coming to Illinois, where abortion remains legal, from Missouri, Arkansas, Kentucky and other states where lawmakers swiftly banned the procedure.

* And Scape…

When the Supreme Court struck down Roe v. Wade in June, Missouri became the first state to outlaw abortion. Since then, logistics centers and clinics in neighboring states where abortions are legal are feeling the brunt of the decision. Demands for services are increasing, and people from Missouri are flocking to Illinois or Kansas get an abortion. […]

In 2020, a year after state legislators passed a strict ban on abortion after eight weeks of pregnancy, 3,391 Missourians received an abortion. Of that number, 1,837 white women and 1,160 Black women underwent the procedure. That same year, according to the Illinois Department of Public Health, doctors in Illinois performed 6,578 abortions on Missouri residents. Meanwhile, the 2021 Kansas Department of Health and Environment’s preliminary data found that 3,458 Missouri residents received an abortion in Kansas. […]

A recent report from Missouri’s health department found that Black women are three times more likely to die while pregnant or within a year of pregnancy than white women. And over the past 10 years, Missouri’s maternal mortality rates have increased. Some factors for Black women residents include late entry for prenatal care, pregnancy-related homicides, and that Black mothers in rural areas of the state experience low birth weight and preterm births at a greater rate than white mothers in rural or urban areas or Black women in urban parts of the state.

This data exposes the inequities in health care access and maternal health outcomes for African American women, which points to why advocates say more Black women in Missouri will die because of lack of access to abortions.

* Shaw Local…

John T. Shaw, director of the Paul Simon Public Policy Institute at Southern Illinois University Carbondale, said pollsters and Republicans across the country believed crime and inflation were “the twin issues that would shape the election.”

Abortion, Shaw said, was likely a larger issue propelling voters than pollsters accounted for.

“It is unclear if this is the fault of polling or if people were propelled by that issue but didn’t want to disclose that to pollsters,” Shaw said. […]

No other issue came close, the AP report said, but many other issues were named most important by about 1 in 10 voters, including abortion, health care, climate change and gun policy.

* The Tribune…

The upcoming session is not expected to address other issues that played high profile roles in the election, including additional protections for abortion access and a proposed ban on assault-style weapons. Those highly fraught topics likely will be pushed off into the new year, when the current crop of lawmakers returns to Springfield for a lame-duck session before newly elected legislators are sworn in. […]

One of the challenges facing lawmakers in the upcoming session is that any measure that passes requires a three-fifths majority in both chambers if it is to take immediate effect. While Democrats hold supermajorities in both chambers, rounding up enough votes on controversial matters to clear that hurdle isn’t always a given.

That’s a major reason why any action on hot-button issues like gun control and abortion is more likely to come after the new year, when only a simple majority would be needed. […]

Pritzker and other Democrats also have been looking for ways to strengthen the state’s already formidable protections for abortion access, and to support providers who are grappling with an influx of patients from other states, in light of the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade this summer.