* Tribune…

As the two-year anniversary of the demise of Roe v. Wade approaches, an increasing number of medical providers around the country are crossing state lines — including into Illinois — for comprehensive abortion training as large sections of the nation either ban or severely restrict pregnancy termination. […]

State abortion bans or restrictions impact the training of an estimated 44% of obstetrics and gynecology residents nationwide. […]

Since the end of Roe, Planned Parenthood of Illinois has seen a roughly 60% increase in trainees at its clinics, with many traveling here from other states.

“There’s a big-time increase in demand for training,” said Dr. Virgil Reid, associate medical director with Planned Parenthood of Illinois. “We have recently reached a point where we had to put a pause on saying yes to new training requests from universities and other organizations around the country that frankly are desperate to get their doctors — their residents — training in this work.”

* Crain’s…

The latest data from Illinois officials shows abortions performed in the state soared to more than 56,000 in 2022 as the number of out-of-state patients seeking the procedure in Illinois grew 50% year over year to 16,849 patients.

Abortion providers in Illinois are averaging a monthly increase of more than 1,100 abortions since the Dobbs ruling, according to an analysis published last year by the Center for Interdisciplinary Inquiry & Innovation in Sexual & Reproductive Health, or Ci3, at the University of Chicago. […]

The Chicago Abortion Fund, a nonprofit organization helping pregnant people secure money, transportation and lodging support associated with traveling for abortion care, has similarly seen an increase in demand for its services.

Since the Dobbs decision, the fund spent nearly $7 million on patient assistance, up from just $200,000 in 2019, Megan Jeyifo, executive director of the Chicago Abortion Fund, said at the City Club event. Back then, the fund helped fewer than 200 people a year. It’s now up to 200 to 300 people per week, totaling more than 12,000 patients a year from across 40 states, Jeyifo said. Through donations and grants, the Chicago Abortion Fund has been able to support 100% of its callers since July 2019.

* Chicago Crusader…

After the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the landmark Roe v. Wade ruling in 2022, the following year Illinois had 37,300 abortion patients who traveled from other states to have the procedure, according to a study and the New York Times.

The figure was 41 percent of the 90,540 abortions performed in Illinois in 2023.

In 2019, just 8,500 abortion patients traveled to Illinois from six states, including Wisconsin, Iowa, Missouri, Indiana, Kentucky and Tennessee.

But in Illinois 37,300 abortion patients in 2023 came from 15 states, including six Southern states, which ban the procedure, according to the study conducted with the Guttmacher Institute, a research organization that supports abortion rights.

* Governor JB Pritzker…

Two years ago, the United States took a giant leap backward. After decades of expanding personal liberties, the Supreme Court ripped them away from women—erasing nearly 50 years of established privacy rights and putting politicians in charge of women’s very personal decisions. The reverberations of the Dobbs case have been enormous—women whose pregnancies endanger their lives forced to flee anti-abortion states, couples required to effectively terminate IVF thus ending their chance to have children, and entire hospital systems shutting down all OB-GYN services in fear of their doctors and nurses being jailed for providing reproductive medical care. Now, women who seek safe, legal abortions are being hurled back to the retrograde reproductive laws of the 1950s, where back alley abortions threaten their lives. The Dobbs decision is a slippery slope that could end in a nightmare state for women. This November, we have a chance at the ballot box to restore reproductive rights and make things right.

In the ’60s and ’70s, my mother stood up for women’s rights at a time when women could be fired from their jobs for being pregnant, were denied the right to advance in the workplace, discriminated against in college admission, and even prevented from getting a credit card without their husband’s approval. My mother was fighting for abortion rights when I was in grammar school, and she let me tag along to protests and marches when I was too young to be left at home alone. Those experiences shaped my life. I learned early on that showing up, speaking out, and voting for change could make all the difference. It did, and it still does.

When Roe v. Wade was overturned in 2022, any illusion abortion rights supporters had of the permanency of our hard-fought progress was shattered. Every aspect of reproductive health care is now being undone. […]

This is why I founded Think Big America—to fight back. In the last two years, we have seen that when people have a choice, they vote overwhelmingly to protect reproductive freedom. I want to see that again in 2024. Think Big America stands with the people of Florida, Nevada, Arizona, and Montana who are working to guarantee abortion access for over 16 million women in those states.

I’m in this fight because restoring a woman’s right to bodily autonomy is a human right. This November, we can reestablish this fundamental freedom at the state and federal levels.

* ABC…

Think Big America, a nonprofit organization affiliated with Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker, on Monday starts running its first paid advertising campaign of the 2024 election cycle across three “reproductive rights battleground states” where the group is supporting ongoing abortion access ballot initiative campaigns.

The 60-second digital ad, released on the second anniversary of the Dobbs decision, is meant to depict “the stark reality pregnant women face in a post-Dobbs America,” according to a spokesperson for the nonprofit group, which shared details of the ad buy first with ABC News.

The spot, part of the group’s six-figure spending targeting and aimed at independent voters, will run on YouTube and connected television platforms in Arizona and Nevada, two states where measures related to protecting abortion will likely be on their November ballots, and in Florida, where an abortion-related ballot initiative is confirmed to appear in front of voters.

“Two years ago, Donald Trump’s Supreme Court not only ripped away abortion access for tens of millions of women, they turned the clock back 50 years on reproductive healthcare,” said Pritzker in a statement.

Watch the ad here…

* Rep. Kelly Cassidy (D-Chicago)…

Two years ago today, the United States Supreme Court released the Dobbs Decision. As we await the end of the Court’s term and an anticipated impact on emergency medical care, we also mark two years of work by the Dobbs Working Group and colleagues in the House and Senate to establish safe access to reproductive and gender-affirming care for the tens of thousands of patients coming into our state for treatment. Over the last two years, we’ve been busy constantly monitoring for new threats from surrounding states and doing everything we can to ensure that patients in Illinois retain access to care while ensuring the safety of providers and patients seeking care from out of state. We passed several bills to ensure our protections are as complete as possible, including a state level bill protecting access to emergency abortion care in the event the Supreme Court drops another late June challenge to access to care. The Dobbs Working Group will continue to monitor for challenges and opportunities to collaborate with national partners to craft policies to expand protections.