After the Supreme Court reversed Roe v. Wade and abortion bans sweeping the Midwest, Illinois has become a top destination for traveling abortion patients. The state faced a 72% increase in abortions between 2020 and 2023, with out-of-state patients accounting for 68% of the increase, per Guttmacher. Like beacon for abortion access in this part of the countryan Illinois abortion fund has partnered with funds elsewhere in the Midwest for a billboard campaign to let the public know they still have options to access abortion care despite new challenges—but that campaign faces significant obstacles of its own .
“At heart, we look out for each other. Abortion funds are here for you,” reads a billboard submitted to Lamar Advertising by the Chicago Abortion Fund (CAF), the Hoosier Abortion Fund (HAF) and the Women's Medical Fund (WMF) of Wisconsin. But in March, the company informed the groups that their billboard had been rejected, citing concerns about the legitimacy of their work. Since August, abortion has been banned in Indiana, where HAF — part of the reproductive justice group All Options of Indiana — operates.
However, no law prohibits pregnant women from seeking the support of abortion funds or abortion funds from disclosing the resources they provide to help people travel out of state for care. Even more blatantly, Lamar Advertising has run billboards from anti-abortion groups trying to prevent people from having abortions and targeting black women with racist messages. Meanwhile, as these billboards appear, women and pregnant women in areas disproportionately affected by abortion bans are scrambling to make sense of an ever-changing, extremely confusing legal landscape.
“We've actually seen the number of people calling us drop significantly since then [Indiana] The ban went into effect,” Parker Dockray, executive director of All Options, told Jezebel. “People don't know they're allowed to call somewhere for help or leave the state. It's heartbreaking that so many people out there who could use our help don't even know about it. People are so confused.” Those who call HAF for help need substantially more financial assistance than callers did before the ban went into effect, as they now have to travel out of state, take more time off work or seek caregiving assistance of the children.
Currently, Dockray says All Options and HAF refer 85 percent of callers to Illinois, which is the closest state where abortion is legal. However, legal abortion is only one part of the equation—the other is knowing that abortion is legal in your state. Alicia Hurtado, CAF's motion building manager, told Jezebel that she helped at least one caller who was from Iowa (which borders Illinois) who initially called to try to get help making an abortion appointment, but stopped. to reply within a few days. Finally, when the caller returned one of Hurtado's messages, she said she would no longer need CAF's services because she learned abortion was banned. Abortion is currently legal until about 21 weeks in Iowa. Hurtado informed the caller of this and says she was “able to redirect her, get her a new appointment, assure her that it was legal for her to have an abortion actually, in her home state.” But for Hurtado, the interaction was discouraging. Across the Midwest, she says, “people are absorbing what they can, but it's a really confusing time for everyone — seeking abortion on top of having to navigate barriers and laws.”
Dockray emphasized that the billboard advertising campaign is intended to “make sure people know about the resources available to them.” Dockray also expressed confusion at Lamar Advertising's legal concerns about the submitted billboards, as the abortion funds that campaigned extensively consulted with lawyers before submitting them for review.
Lamar Advertising did not immediately respond to a request for comment about the fund's rejected abortion billboards, or the approval process for anti-abortion advertising groups. Of course, for Dockray and Hurtado, the company's willingness to post anti-abortion billboards but not billboards informing people of their choice to seek help from an abortion fund represents a double standard that actively harms people in the whole area.
In December 2022, self-reported data from abortion providers in Illinois shown the percentage of out-of-state patients served rose from 6% before its decline Roe in a third after. People in midwestern states that have banned abortion need to know their options, people in midwestern states that have not banned abortion need to know that they can get care in their state and abortion funds can help them to explore all of that, Dockray said. But people need to know that there are abortion funds to turn to.
Abortion-related advertising has proven difficult for groups that have tried, even in ostensibly blue states like New York. In March, a Don't Ban Equality campaign billboard reading “Abortion access is every business'” was dropped from TSX Broadway, which features billboard ads in Times Square. Don't Ban Equality updated the sign to change “abortion access” to “reproductive health” and submitted it to various advertising agencies offering billboards in Times Square, but all rejected it. The ad, co-signed by companies including Bumble, Lyft, Match Group, Warner Music Group and Yelp, was eventually accepted by an advertising agency at 54th and Broadway, north of Times Square. Luck notes that “the real estate investors, landlords and media networks that control Times Square” have “proved to be more risk averse” than the newspapers and local media that often receive ads like this.
Dockray and Hurtado have since been able to place their billboards with vendors in Chicago and Wisconsin, and have posted ads in department stores, through sidewalk stickers and online. But it's disappointing that a major billboard company would drop its ads amid a crisis of confusion and misinformation that inevitably prevents people from getting abortion care. “Chaos, confusion and stigma are what's wanted as well as effectively banning services. The anti-abortion movement knows that by creating chaos, it's harder for people to know what their rights are even when they have rights, or how to get the support they need,” Dockray said. By rejecting their billboards, he believes Lamar Advertising is fueling this predicament. “It's sad to see a decline in calls, because we know it's not that fewer people need abortion care — it's just that people don't know where to call.”
