Planned Parenthood Launches First Mobile Abortion Clinic in Illinois to Serve Patients from Border States

Planned Parenthood says it will soon open its first mobile abortion clinic in the country, in southern Illinois. With a growing number of patients in states that now prohibit abortion traveling for the procedure, the goal is to reduce the hundreds of miles that people are having to travel now in order to access care and meet them where they are. This mobile facility – set up inside of an RV – will include a small waiting area, laboratory, and two exam rooms.

Strategic Response to Increasing Demand

Illinois has become a hub for people from other parts of the Midwest and South who've become unable to get abortions in their home states as a result of this summer's U.S. Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade. Anticipating that possibility, Planned Parenthood opened the Fairview Heights Health Center in Fairview Heights, Illinois, in 2019, just across the state line from St. Louis. Missouri had some of the nation's strictest abortion laws even before the court released the Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization decision, and state officials moved almost immediately to implement abortion bans in response to it.

The Fairview Heights clinic is projected to receive about 14,000 patients traveling from across the region each year, an increase that "is materializing much, much faster than we anticipated," said Yamelsie Rodriguez, President of Planned Parenthood of the St. Louis Region and Southwest Missouri. In fact, between June and August, the organization saw nearly a four-fold increase in patients coming from outside Missouri or Illinois to its Fairview Heights clinic. "We just need more access points," Rodriguez added.

Mobile Clinic Services and Protocols

The mobile clinic will begin offering consultations and dispensing abortion pills later this year. It will operate within Illinois, where abortion remains legal, but will be able to travel closer to neighboring states' borders, reducing the distance many patients travel for the procedure. According to officials, the service rollout and clinical protocols are as follows:

• Initial Services: It initially will provide medication abortion up to 11 weeks gestation.
• Future Expansion: It eventually will offer surgical abortions, likely beginning sometime next year.
• Patient Protocol: Patients seeing healthcare providers at the mobile clinic will follow the same protocol as those visiting a permanent Planned Parenthood facility.
• Medication Process: They take mifepristone - the first in a two-drug protocol approved by the Food and Drug Administration - on-site, and are offered counseling about the second drug, misoprostol.

Dr. Colleen McNicholas, chief medical officer for Planned Parenthood in the region, noted that "The only thing that will change is the fact that now they might only have to drive five hours instead of nine hours."

Logistics, Security, and Future Strategy

One of the first tasks will be to determine the best routes for the mobile clinic. The organization is reviewing data to determine where patients are coming from and looking at healthcare facilities, churches, and other locations as potential stopping-off points. Another important consideration will be safety and security for patients and staff. Officials say they may expand to additional mobile units in the future if the concept succeeds. Rodriguez emphasized the urgency of the situation, stating, "We are all trying to work together to meet the exponential increase in the number of patients that are traveling from banned states to what we're calling 'haven states' for abortion care. It's an all-hands-on-deck moment."

Broadening Reproductive Healthcare Access

In addition to the mobile clinic, the organization is also preparing to open a new family planning clinic in Rolla, Mo., in early November. This is part of a larger push to expand services including contraception, STI screening, and transgender care, and to provide reproductive healthcare in underserved, rural parts of the state. These efforts represent a larger strategy to find new ways to reach patients seeking abortions post-Roe.