Illinois pitching for funds to shore up abortion tourism denounced as ‘macabre’

CHICAGO (OSV News) — The executive director of the Illinois bishops’ conference and an Illinois pro-life leader have decried the state’s call for funding to support Illinois’ abortion tourism industry after recent data indicated a slight weakening in the number of out-of-state women coming to the state to abort their unborn children.

Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker announced Jan. 28 the launch of the $5 million dollar Prairie State Access Fund, calling it “an example of true public and private sector partnership” that would help build “a more connected and resourced reproductive health ecosystem.”

The tourism aspect of the governor’s appeal was not lost on Robert Gilligan, executive director of the Catholic Conference of Illinois.

“When we are publicly asking for private donations to subsidize services for people who want to come to Illinois for an abortion … we should all think about what that really means,” Gilligan told OSV News. “Most states, many places, entice people to come to their states for: various cultural activities, the weather, many other things. And here we are, trying to provide abortion-related services, so people can end the life of their unborn child. It’s so macabre.”

The Catholic Church teaches that all human life is sacred from conception to natural death, and as such, both opposes direct abortion and calls for strengthening support for those living in poverty or other risk factors that can push mothers toward aborting their unborn child.

With nearly 22.6% of the nation’s share of the 155,000 out-of-state abortions in 2024, Pritzker touted Illinois as the No. 1 out-of-state abortion destination in the U.S. The data has been tracked by the Guttmacher Institute, an abortion and reproductive health policy and research group that advocates for abortion, since the 2022 overturning of Roe v. Wade. The 2022 U.S. Supreme Court decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization relegated the legality of abortion to individual states.

Nearby Indiana, Kentucky and Tennessee have banned abortion and their residents make up a significant portion of the out-of-state women seeking abortion in Illinois. In downstate Illinois, one Planned Parenthood clinic told local media in the spring of 2025, 90% of its clients were from neighboring states.

According to Guttmacher, 39% of abortions in Illinois were from out-of-state travel in 2024. However, Guttmacher also found that out-of-state abortions were also down from the year before, when 43% of all abortions in Illinois were from out of state.

Illinois Right to Life President Mary Kate Zander said “this new program” raises the issue of funding abortion tourism to a level beyond Illinois.

“Pro-life and pro-parents’ rights Americans need to start paying attention to what’s going on in our state, because this is officially a national problem. If we don’t put a stop to the madness, we are going to be a national foothold for all sorts of reproductive atrocities and these ‘public-private partnerships’ are only the beginning,” she told OSV News in an email.

Zander also criticized the fund’s ties to the encouragement of gender dysphoria, calling out what she described as “Pritzker’s obsession over abortion and sex transitions.”

The governor said the fund was a response to the Trump administration’s “all out assault on abortion and gender-affirming care.”

Planned Parenthood, the nation’s largest abortion provider, which is poised to benefit significantly from the fund, also provides gender transition services, such as hormone therapy and puberty blockers.

The U.S. Catholic bishops approved in November an updated version of their guiding document on Catholic health care explaining the church’s opposition to such services on the basis that “any technological intervention that does not accord with the fundamental order of the human person as a unity of body and soul, including the sexual difference inscribed in the body, ultimately does not help but, rather, harms the human person.”

At the Chicago press conference announcing the fund, Pritzker said, “Ensuring clinics can stay open, providers can grow, and systems can handle the demand that’s being put on them, this is a task that requires all of us — across government, across business, philanthropy, and just everyday people who want to support this work.”

Pritzker and other officials, including the head of the Chicago Abortion Fund, made a pitch for other states across the country to contribute to the fund.

Ameya Pawar, president of the Chicago-based Michael Reese Health Trust, which is overseeing the fund, said, “As federal policy and courts have narrowed access, Illinois is not just a haven. In many ways, it is the nation’s safety net for this healthcare.”

The Illinois conference’s Gilligan said while the state’s heavy-handed support of abortion continues to escalate, the Church has “some opportunities here that we have not really fully taken advantage of.”

He pointed to the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ 5-year-old program called “Walking With Moms in Need,” which is a parish-based support system for women who find themselves unexpectedly pregnant.

Gilligan said the program, as well as the difficult topic of abortion, needs to be talked about more in churches.

“But with that, I would underscore, it has to be done in a manner that is not judgmental and in a manner that is compassionate,” he said.

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