Illinois abortion RV plans future trips to Kentucky border

Planned Parenthood officials on Monday announced plans for a mobile abortion clinic that would stay in Illinois but travel close to the borders of western Kentucky and Tennessee.

The announcement comes 100 days after the Supreme Court ruling that allowed states to ban the procedure. Illinois didn’t institute an abortion ban, but Missouri, Kentucky and Tennessee did, along with several other states in the South and Midwest.

Plans call for the 37-foot RV to travel near to the borders of southeastern Missouri, western Kentucky and northwest Tennessee. Planned Parenthood of St. Louis said the RV is expected to arrive this month and could be operational by the end of the year.

The RV will be outfitted with two exam rooms, a lab and a waiting room. Initially, it will provide chemical abortions up to 11 weeks of gestation. Planned Parenthood will aim to start providing surgical abortions at the clinic after the first few months.

Laura Echevarria, spokeswoman for the National Right to Life Committee, which opposes abortions, called the mobile abortion clinic “another grotesque demeaning of human life.”

“Chemical abortions can lead to life-threatening complications,” Echevarria said in a statement. “Will women recognize those complications early enough to seek treatment?”

There are about two dozen abortion clinics in Illinois, mostly in the Chicago area. A new clinic is scheduled to open in Carbondale this month.

The nonprofit Just The Pill operates a mobile clinic in Colorado. That organization also plans a mobile clinic in Illinois in 2023.

Some Democrat-led cities like St. Louis, meanwhile, have set aside money to help pregnant women travel to states where abortions are legal.

Leaders of the St. Louis Planned Parenthood office said that since June, the Fairview Heights clinic has seen a 30% increase in abortion patients — a rate officials said was even higher than they anticipated. Patients from outside Missouri and Illinois increased by more than 340%.



Dr. Colleen McNicholas, chief medical officer at Planned Parenthood of the St. Louis Region and Southwest Missouri, sits in a surgical room on April 11, 2022, at the Planned Parenthood clinic in Fairview Heights, Ill. Midwestern Planned Parenthood officials on Monday, Oct. 3, 2022, announced plans for a mobile abortion clinic — a 37-foot RV that will stay in Illinois but travel to near the border of adjoining states that have banned the procedure since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade earlier this year. (AP Photo/Martha Irvine, File)