Planned Parenthood announces Illinois-Wisconsin partnership in Waukegan – Illinois Newsroom

SPRINGFIELD – Deliberate Parenthood associates in Illinois and Wisconsin stated Thursday they’ve fashioned a partnership to broaden providers at an abortion clinic in Waukegan to assist serve residents of Wisconsin, the place abortion providers are actually banned.

That announcement got here three weeks after the U.S. Supreme Courtroom overturned the 1973 determination in Roe v. Wade, which legalized abortion nationwide. As soon as the court docket rendered that call, a Wisconsin legislation relationship again to 1849 that criminalizes abortion mechanically went again into impact.

“We opened the Waukegan Well being Middle in 2020 in anticipation of this second,” Jennifer Welch, president and CEO of Deliberate Parenthood of Illinois, stated throughout a digital information convention. “We anticipated that Wisconsin would stop entry to abortion care as quickly as Roe fell, so we have been ready to offer Wisconsin sufferers the care they wanted.”

Underneath the association, sufferers can nonetheless go to considered one of 4 clinics in Wisconsin to obtain care earlier than and after the process. However a number of Wisconsin clinicians, nurses and different workers journey to the Waukegan clinic to broaden capability at that well being middle and different clinics in Illinois via telehealth.

Tanya Atkinson, president and CEO of Deliberate Parenthood of Wisconsin, stated her group had anticipated the overturning of Roe v. Wade for years and had been working for the previous a number of months to construct partnerships with suppliers in different states.

“Regardless of the devastating impression of this prison abortion ban, we’re grateful to have well being care choices for our sufferers proper subsequent door in Illinois,” she stated. “Deliberate Parenthood of Wisconsin is engaged on many fronts to supply sufferers with data, assist, monetary assets and entry to abortion providers and to follow-up care.”

Atkinson famous that even earlier than Roe v. Wade was overturned, Wisconsin imposed strict laws on abortion.

Based on the Guttmacher Institute, a corporation that helps abortion rights, even after the unique Roe v. Wade determination, Wisconsin imposed quite a lot of restrictions on the process.

These included a 24-hour ready interval and state-directed counseling that included data designed to discourage a affected person from having an abortion, a prohibition towards the usage of telemedicine to manage abortion drugs; and a requirement for parental consent to carry out an abortion on a minor, amongst others.

Illinois, in contrast, imposes just about no authorized restrictions on entry to abortion providers. A 2019 legislation often known as the Reproductive Well being Act declares entry to abortion providers a “basic proper” beneath Illinois legislation. And final 12 months, lawmakers repealed what was often known as the Parental Discover of Abortion Act, requiring dad and mom of minors searching for abortions to be notified earlier than the process may very well be carried out.

Due to that, many Wisconsin residents searching for abortions went to out-of-state suppliers, together with these in Illinois. However Kristen Schultz, chief technique and operations officer on the Illinois affiliate, stated that since Roe v. Wade was overturned on June 24, there was a 10-fold enhance within the variety of Wisconsin residents coming to Illinois for abortion providers.

Earlier within the week, Lt. Gov. Juliana Stratton testified earlier than the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee in regards to the elevated demand for abortion providers that Illinois is seeing from residents of different states the place the process is now both banned or closely restricted.

“We aren’t simply an oasis of reproductive care, however an island,” she stated, in response to her ready remarks. “Right here’s what that appears like: It appears like disenfranchised but decided sufferers coming from
each surrounding state, but additionally from as far-off as Tennessee, Texas, Louisiana, Alabama, and Florida.”