Illinois Law Mandates On-Campus Abortion Services | The American Spectator

While the Hyde Amendment restricts federal funding for abortion, 16 states, including Illinois, use their own state taxpayer funds to pay for abortion services for Medicaid recipients or those with financial need. Last week, Illinois Governor JB Pritzker greatly expanded state taxpayer complicity in abortion by signing into law a mandate that requires public colleges and universities to provide medication abortions on campus to any student who requests them.

Illinois House Bill 3709, which passed with a House vote of 7 to 4 on March 19, 2025, and was signed into law on August 22, 2025, by Illinois Governor JB Pritzker, mandates that if a public college or university’s student health services include a pharmacy, the school must make medication abortion available at a physical location on campus.

Not surprisingly, the mandate was promoted and marketed by the campus chapter of Planned Parenthood. Campus abortion activist, Emma Darbro, a University of Illinois recent grad and formerly the president of Planned Parenthood’s Chapter at the University, teamed up with Sydney Turner, the health policy director of the U of I student Planned Parenthood group at the time, to write, market, and administer the student abortion referendum for U of I undergraduates. The survey asked students whether they wanted on-campus access to abortion pills, and through an elaborate marketing campaign, managed to convince a majority of the 6,354 student voters to support the idea. (RELATED: Taking Down Planned Parenthood)

Yet, despite Planned Parenthood’s best efforts in the early days of 2024, the on-campus abortion access idea faced strong opposition from the University of Illinois Health Center itself. In April 2024, Awais Vaid, executive health director of the McKinley Student Health Center at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, told a reporter that the campus was not planning to provide on-campus access to abortion medications because “unfortunately, currently, McKinley does not have the expertise in-house to provide abortion services. On our website, we have provided all the resources that are available.”

Vaid’s initial reluctance to provide on-campus access to abortion should not be surprising. Vaid, who has a medical degree from the University of Mumbai in India and worked as a resident physician in Mumbai’s Mahatma Gandhi Hospital, understands what happens when women do not receive proper medical monitoring. Arriving in the United States in 2001 to pursue a Master’s Degree in Public Health from Northern Illinois, Vaid has been the director of the U of I Health Center since 2022.

Vaid, a physician, understands how dangerous medication abortion can be when the patient is not well-supervised and monitored. Vaid knows that medication abortion is only for those whose pregnancies have not progressed beyond the 10-11 week gestation, and he knows that his campus facilities were not equipped with the kind of safeguards that are needed for a safe administration of the drugs. (RELATED: Abortion Drug Black Market Is Booming. Will Pam Bondi Intervene?)

The regimen for medication abortion involves two medications, including mifepristone, which blocks the hormone progesterone, necessary to sustain an unborn child, and misoprostol, which causes uterine contractions to expel the unborn child. Although these drugs can be administered at home or in a clinical setting, the important point is that any patient taking these drugs must be monitored and clinically supported, as there have been many documented cases of death associated with medication abortion. (RELATED: Abortion Drug Black Market Is Booming. Will Pam Bondi Intervene?)

The FDA, along with other health agencies, monitors adverse outcomes associated with mifepristone, the primary medication used for abortion procedures — including fatalities. Reported causes of death following medication abortion include undiagnosed ectopic pregnancy (which cannot be resolved by this medication and presents a significant risk), severe infections such as sepsis, excessive bleeding or hemorrhage, administration of the medication beyond recommended gestational limits, and other pre-existing medical conditions that may not be identified by campus health centers. (RELATED: Trump Administration Moves to Ban Abortions in VA Healthcare System)

A National Institutes of Health study revealed that “significant morbidity and mortality have occurred following the use of mifepristone as an abortifacient.” The authors stated that “a pre-abortion ultrasound should be required to rule out ectopic pregnancy and confirm gestational age.”

It was clear that U of I’s health director, Awais Vaid, wanted no part of dispensing medication abortion to students on his campus. But Illinois Governor Pritzker was determined to please his pro-abortion constituents — even though he must have known that he was putting his own state’s students’ lives at risk.

But then again, Illinois is not the first state to provide campus-based abortion services. California was the first to provide medication abortion on its campuses. This occurred despite initial resistance by Dr. Guy Nicolette, assistant vice chancellor for University Health Services at the University of California, Berkley, who told a reporter for the New York  Times that “there are valid security concerns … Not every provider feels competent or comfortable doing this.”

California campus abortion was followed by Massachusetts and New York. It is likely that other blue state governors will join since student abortion advocates have been well-funded to garner support on their campuses. Even private colleges are not immune from the abortion activism — and their demands — on their campuses. New York’s Barnard College announced in 2022 that “Barnard will expand student options by ensuring that our campus providers are prepared and trained in the provision of medication abortion by Fall 2023.” Barnard’s policy change was in response to the demands by students led by abortion activist, Niharika Rao, a senior at Barnard College who was described in press accounts as having been campaigning on campus for the law “through advocacy groups” including Advocates for Youth.

These pro-abortion student advocates are well-funded and highly motivated. Despite their initial reluctance to provide such risky abortion services, college health directors and their presidents are likely to meet student-activist demands, even at the risk of their own students’ health.

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