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CARBONDALE, Ill. — One month after a near-total abortion ban went into effect in Florida, abortion clinics in southern Illinois have seen a rise in new patients from the Southeastern U.S.

Providers say calls have gone up, appointments have increased and more patients need assistance with the cost. So far, they are able to keep up because of preparation and planning.

Julie Burkhart, co-owner of , said she had hired more staff members in order to increase capacity before the ban went into effect.

“We’ve been prepared for this,� Burkhart said. “We’ve been ready.�

A Florida law banning abortion after six weeks’ gestation — before many women know they are pregnant — went into effect on May 1.

Prior to that, the state allowed abortion through the first 15 weeks of pregnancy and was a key access point for with more restrictive laws. Last year, had abortions in Florida, accounting for about 1 out every 12 abortions in the country.

Florida voters will have a chance to overturn the ban this November, when a constitutional amendment to protect abortion access will be on the ballot.

In the meantime, despite being several states and sometimes hundreds of miles away, clinics in Carbondale and the Metro East have become the closest locations for many women across the South to find an abortion provider.

LaQuetta Cooper, vice president of patient services for , said data is still being collected, but just two weeks into May, its Fairview Heights clinic saw a 10% increase in calls from patients seeking an abortion.

The clinic has been able to accommodate the increased demand, Cooper said, with minor changes such as providing additional appointment slots for abortion procedures.

The Planned Parenthood affiliate also added a way to receive medication abortion pills through its mobile app without a virtual or in-clinic visit. Abortion seekers up to 10 weeks pregnant can answer screening questions on the app and, if they qualify, have the pills mailed to an Illinois address.

“It is our goal that this will open up in-clinic spots for folks who need to travel from out of state,� Cooper said.

The Fairview Heights clinic’s goal is to have appointments available within one week of a patient reaching out, she said. If wait times increase beyond that, the clinic “will scale up operations to meet the need.�

Abortion providers in states closest to Florida, such as North Carolina and Virginia, in patients since the ban, but some are struggling to keep up.

About 30% of clinics across North Carolina, Virginia, Maryland and Washington, D.C., saw wait times for abortion appointments increase after May 1, according to survey data .

found that Florida patients now face an average wait of 14 days for an abortion after the six-week mark, up from five days before the ban.

What has helped soften the blow in Illinois, providers say, are the three abortion clinics that have opened in Carbondale since the U.S. Supreme Court struck down Roe v. Wade in 2022.

Carbondale is about 100 miles south of the Metro East clinics and serves as a stop on the Amtrak route that connects Chicago, Memphis and New Orleans.

Providers in Illinois say they also heavily depend on nonprofit organizations such as the and the to help patients in need pay for the procedure and expenses associated with travel such as transportation, food, lodging and child care.

They are worried, however, about keeping up, especially if the number of out-of-state patients continues to increase.

“There is a definite concern about the sustainability,� Burkhart said. “How long can we as clinics, as funds and as donors ... how long can this be sustained?�

Leading provider

Even before the Florida ban, abortion providers in Illinois — a state with few abortion restrictions — have responded to an influx of patients from neighboring states.

that the number of abortions has even increased since the Supreme Court decision, despite 14 states banning the procedure with limited exceptions and another six greatly restricting it.

That’s because, , of the increase in medication abortions using a series of pills that can also be sent in the mail (seven states have passed shield laws that protect physicians who provide medication abortion via telehealth, regardless of where the patient lives), and efforts in states like Illinois to absorb an influx of patients from states with restrictions.

Illinois by far saw the biggest increase in abortions in the 18 months following the Supreme Court decision, according to the .

Last year, Illinois saw 37,700 more abortions than it did in 2020, an increase of 71%, . Most — about 26,000 — were for out-of-state patients.

One morning at a Planned Parenthood’s Fairview Heights clinic early this year, Dr. Amy Addante faced a 9 a.m. to 7 p.m. schedule of 31 medication abortions and 21 procedural.

Addante travels four hours from Chicago to the clinic every two or three months to work for several days. In September 2022, the clinic increased its hours to 10 hours a day, six days a week, due to appointment wait times extending to almost three weeks.

Down the hall from Addante is the Regional Logistics Center, where case manager Carolyn Sherrell toggled between computer screens as she talked to callers and purchased their flights or bus rides, booked their hotel rooms and sent drivers to courier them to and from appointments.

Planned Parenthood and Hope Clinic together launched the center just months before the Supreme Court decision to provide no-cost navigation services to qualifying patients using donations and assistance from abortion funds. , the center coordinated nearly $2.5 million in funds to help 5,000 patients.

Sherrell had to talk quickly but calmly to callers, many of whom were homeless, unaware of the nearest airport or perplexed about obtaining their boarding pass.

Addante said patients are both angry and scared — angry about having to travel so far to their appointment and scared they might need follow-up care.

“It’s really important for me to make them feel safe, make them feel not judged because they have gone through a lot of barriers and a lot of stigma along the way,� Addante said.

Julie Uhal, abortion expansion manager for , said since the affiliate opened the 11,200-square-foot clinic with four procedure rooms in Carbondale in mid-December, 90% of the abortion patients there have come from another state — 24 other states to be exact.

Building the clinic, Uhal said, “was one of the biggest strategies we’ve taken to increase capacity knowing that there was a lot of need in the area of the country south of Illinois.�

So far, Uhal and leaders of the other new abortion clinics in Carbondale — , which opened in October 2022, and , which opened a month later — say they are seeing the number of abortion patients slowly increase since Florida’s ban.

Andrea Gallegos, the executive administrator at Alamo — where 90% to 95% of patients are also from out of state — said patients from southern states have long made their way to the clinic, but she is now seeing at least one patient a day from Florida.

While clinics in Virginia and New Hampshire , the leaders at the Carbondale clinics say they have been able to manage.

“We are watching to see if it gets to that point, but as of right now, we haven’t had to do any of those things,� Gallegos said.

Rising costs

What current data won’t capture, the providers say, are the numbers of women wanting to end their pregnancies who end up unable to because of travel barriers.

As patients must travel farther or possibly have abortions later in their pregnancies — costs will rise and increase the need for financial help. Floridians now live an average of 590 miles to the nearest clinic offering abortions after six weeks, according to the Middlebury College data.

The National Network of Abortion Funds, a network of more than 100 nationwide that heavily rely on donations and volunteers, in the year after the Supreme Court decision, funds saw a 39% increase in requests for support compared with the year prior.

The funds dispersed nearly $37 million to help cover the cost of abortions — an 88% increase; and more than $10 million to help with travel-related costs — a 178% increase.

Alison Dreith, director of strategic partnerships for Midwest Access Coalition fund, which supports patients traveling mainly to Illinois and Kansas, said over the past two years, the average cost of helping a patient has gone from $350 to $1,200.

Despite growing from 2½ employees to 14 full-time employees, staff must sometimes stop taking new clients until they can catch up.

“We’re shutting down our lines on Thursdays or sometimes earlier just because the staff has reached capacity,� Dreith said. While callers can leave messages, “we won’t return those requests until Monday or until when staff has more capacity.�

The agency is seeing an uptick in clients coming from Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi and Louisiana since the Florida ban, she said. Through May 28 this year, 176 clients have come from those states — and 24% have come after May 1.

Staff served only one client from Florida this year prior to May 1. They served five in the four weeks after.

Another change is how afraid the clients are, Dreith said.

“They are scared they are going to get arrested,� she said. “They are scared someone is going to find out. They are scared because they have never flown before.�

Gallegos at the Alamo clinic said it’s become hard to predict how many abortion patients will not show up for their appointments.

“Anything can happen,� Gallegos said. “Your car can break down or maybe your ride backs out or your kid is sick and you have no one to watch them. Maybe you got the day off work, but now something has changed. ... Maybe they haven’t been able to tell anyone they are traveling and are fearful about it.�

Misinformation abounds, and some may not understand that abortion is legal in other states, said Uhal with Planned Parenthood.

“One of the barriers that people face is just even knowing that they have an option and that there are resources to help them get here,� she said.

The result, Uhal said, is that it’s mainly patients with the wherewithal who are able to overcome the geographical barriers to getting an abortion.

She said, “It’s really only the folks who have the resources to be able to travel much farther to Illinois or to the Eastern Seaboard for them to be able to access care.�