A Small Illinois City at the Center of a Seismic Shift in Abortion Access

Carbondale, Ill., a liberal enclave within driving distance of 10 states with abortion bans, has become a hub for the procedure. Last year there were nearly 11,000 abortions in this city of 21,000.

By Elizabeth Williamson
Photographs by Julia Rendleman
Dec. 7, 2025

The cars and pickup trucks from Missouri, Tennessee, Arkansas, Louisiana, Indiana and Mississippi started arriving early in the morning at the Alamo Women’s Clinic in Carbondale, Ill. Men were not allowed inside, so most waited in the parking lot, scrolling or dozing, exhausted after driving through the night.

Abortion is legal in Illinois, but the state is surrounded by others that have largely banned the procedure in the three years since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. As a result, Illinois now leads the nation in out-of-state abortion patients. Carbondale, a college town in Illinois’s southern tip within driving distance of 10 states with abortion bans, has become a major abortion hub.

Continued: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/07/us/politics/abortion-carbondale.html

One year without Roe: Data shows how abortion access has changed in America

Fewer women are getting abortions, and those without resources are increasingly the least likely to have them.

June 22, 2023
By Jasmine Cui, Chloe Atkins and Sarah Kaufman

The day Mayron Hollis discovered she was pregnant in spring 2022 was the same day doctors gave her terrible news: The pregnancy could be fatal to both her and her fetus.

Hollis had given birth to another child earlier in the year through cesarean section, and doctors were concerned she would experience a cesarean scar pregnancy — a rare type of ectopic pregnancy in which a fertilized egg implants and develops in the cesarean scar. It can cause fatal internal bleeding.

https://www.nbcnews.com/data-graphics/dobbs-abortion-access-data-roe-v-wade-overturned-rcna88947

How one quiet Illinois college town became the symbol of abortion rights in America

Chris Kenning, USA TODAY
Jun. 4, 2023

CARBONDALE, Ill. – The 26-year-old had never heard of the distant southern Illinois town, but it had become the closest option.

So she cobbled together money. Found child care. Asked her brother for a ride. And set off early one morning to drive north across state lines to 22,000-person Carbondale.

Continued: https://www.usatoday.com/in-depth/news/investigations/2023/06/04/carbondale-illinois-abortion-clinics/70180040007/