The patient narratives were displayed on a screen in the lobby of the new central Illinois abortion clinic on a recent weekend.

One abortion seeker traveled hundreds of miles from Florida to end a 22-week pregnancy following a birth control failure.

“I have infant twins and my previous birth/labor was so traumatic,” the patient said. “I could not handle postpartum depression with twins and a newborn.”

Another came from Kentucky at 19 weeks pregnant, citing worsening depression that had spiraled into suicidal thoughts.

“It was scary,” that patient said. “I got help. I chose to live. I chose to be a good mom to my kids. Without me there is no baby anyway.”

Both terminated their pregnancies at Equity Clinic in Champaign, which was founded in February by an Ohio-based physician to improve abortion access amid waning options in his state as well as much of the Midwest and South.

As the nation approaches the one-year anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade, Equity Clinic is among a wave of new abortion providers that have sought haven in Illinois, one of the few states with strong reproductive rights protections remaining in the largely restrictive Midwest.

The post-Roe migration of abortion providers to Illinois follows a national pattern of clinics and medical providers fleeing states with abortion bans or tight gestational limits and resettling in parts of the country where terminating a pregnancy is still legal.

On June 24, 2022, the Supreme Court in a 5-4 decision overturned Roe, the 1973 landmark ruling that had guaranteed abortion rights nationwide. The high court also voted 6-3 to uphold a restrictive Mississippi abortion law in the case at hand, Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization.

The reversal of a half-century of federal abortion protections left providers in large swaths of the country scrambling to suddenly cancel appointments and quickly refer patients to clinics in other states, often requiring long wait times and travel distances.

Equity Clinic founder and medical director Dr. Keith Reisinger-Kindle described the historical moment as “surreal.”

When Roe was reversed, he was providing abortions at a clinic in Ohio, where a roughly six-week abortion ban went into effect that day prohibiting nearly all pregnancy terminations, though the measure has since been blocked by the courts amid legal challenges.

Although a draft that was leaked a few weeks prior to the ruling had indicated the Supreme Court’s plan to eliminate federal abortion protections, Reisinger-Kindle recounted that the official end of Roe was still stunning.

“It was very shocking,” he said. “You can’t prepare for that. We knew it’s coming. But the landing of it is still really, really painful. Because we see the thousands of lives it impacts. It’s miserable.”

The obstetrician-gynecologist continues to work during the week at a public university in Ohio.

But every weekend, he drives roughly 500 miles round trip from Dayton to Champaign to provide medication and surgical abortions at Equity Clinic, which is just a few miles from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. The 6,000-square-foot medical center has served several hundred patients since it opened about four months ago.

Around 95% of the clinic’s patients are from out of state, often nearby states like Indiana, Ohio and Missouri, though some from as far as the southern tips of Texas and Florida, Reisinger-Kindle said.

“Our patients are coming from states that lost access,” he said.

Illinois has seen a surge in out-of-state abortion seekers in the last year, with some providers predicting as many as 20,000 to 30,000 additional patients would be traveling here each year to terminate pregnancies post-Roe.

The 2019 Reproductive Health Act declared abortion a “fundamental right” in Illinois, which has long been considered an oasis of abortion care in Middle America.

Planned Parenthood of Illinois, which has 17 clinics across the state, reported a 54% increase in abortion patients since Roe’s demise; nearly a quarter of patients traveled from another state, compared with 7% when Roe was still intact. The number of patients in need of financial support or assistance with travel has more than doubled in the past year, the agency said in a statement.

“The Supreme Court stripped away a fundamental right, causing devastating consequences for our patients, especially those forced to travel for care,” said Jennifer Welch, president and CEO of Planned Parenthood of Illinois, in the statement. “People should have the freedom to control their own body without political or corporate interference.”

As demand has skyrocketed post-Roe, several new abortion clinics have emerged in Illinois, all founded by providers from more restrictive states.

A doctor from Wisconsin opened an abortion clinic in Rockford earlier this year, amid anti-abortion protests. Planned Parenthood of Illinois announced over the summer that Wisconsin clinicians would be traveling across the state line to perform abortions in Illinois.

An Indiana abortion provider recently purchased property in Danville, which spurred heated demonstrations for and against abortion access in the east-central Illinois community of about 30,000 people. But the building was partially destroyed last month after a man rammed his car into the structure, allegedly intending to set the building on fire. Federal authorities said the driver cited his long-standing opposition to abortion and threatened to attempt to burn the building down again if given the chance.

Two new clinics also recently settled in Carbondale. Choices: Center for Reproductive Health, based in Tennessee, opened an abortion clinic in the southern Illinois college town in October. The Alamo Clinic relocated from Oklahoma to Carbondale in November; three doctors travel there in a rotation from Montana, Tennessee or Texas each week.

“Illinois was just a state that really stood out in this sea of states that would more than likely ban abortion,” the director of Alamo Clinic said.

To those who oppose abortion, Illinois’ growing status as a refuge for abortion care tarnishes the reputation of the state.

Abortion opponents have dubbed June 24 “National Celebrate Life Day” and are hosting demonstrations, galas and anti-abortion protests across the country. Yet the anniversary is bittersweet for many abortion foes in Illinois, where leaders have strengthened abortion protections following the demise of Roe.

“It turns Illinois into an abortion destination,” said Eric Scheidler, executive director of the Chicago-based Pro-Life Action League. “We used to focus on the beautiful prairies here. The Prairie State. Or the incredible legacy of Abraham Lincoln. The Land of Lincoln. Now Illinois is the land of abortion.”

On a recent Sunday, Reisinger-Kindle scrubs his hands and forearms in preparation for a 22-week surgical abortion.

“There’s a million reasons why people get to 22 weeks,” he said. “It’s usually attempts that fall through. Transportation across state lines that then falls through. Funding that then falls through. Changes otherwise in their lives that impact their decision. Literally a million things can happen — it’s so complex.”

The vast majority of abortions in the United States occur before 13 weeks of gestation, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In Reisinger-Kindle’s clinic, more than 60% of abortion patients have been in their second trimester.

“Unfortunately, we do know that pregnancies are being terminated later because of access,” he said. “That of course means slightly more risk.”

At 18, Reisinger-Kindle began working at an abortion clinic as a medical assistant, where he would help coach patients through abortion procedures.

“So I was holding their hand and wiping away their tears and being their emotional support,” he said. “And for a lot of our patients, having men in their lives fill that role is unheard of. That just fueled me. I was like, we need men — and particularly white men — to use their experience and their privilege and their place in the world to show folks that this is actually how we treat people and how we support people. Once you’re a part of that, you can’t do anything else.”

That was when he decided to become a physician.

“The only reason I went to medical school was to be an abortion provider,” he said.

To Reisinger-Kindle, providing abortions has a far more profound impact on patients than delivering babies.

“Everyone’s excited about a baby,” he said. “People in this space, unfortunately, are often shunned and shamed and really stigmatized. In this space, one person saying, ‘You’re strong, this is a hard choice but we’re here with you,’ is life-changing. Because you’re probably the only person giving them that message.”

Part of his mission at Equity Clinic is to provide an abortion training site for medical students and residents amid dwindling options nationwide, as more states ban or highly restrict terminating pregnancies.

Fifteen residents and some medical students from nearby states — and some from as far as Texas — are coming soon to train at Equity Clinic, said Reisinger-Kindle, who helps set up lodging and other logistical support for the traveling medical practitioners.

OB-GYN residency programs must provide “clinical experience or access to clinical experience in the provision of abortions as part of the planned curriculum,” according to the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education, though residents with moral objections are permitted to opt out. If a program is in an area where “resident access to this clinical experience is unlawful,” the program must provide access to abortion training in an area where it’s legal, according to the program requirements.

Almost a year since Roe was overturned, 13 states — including neighboring Missouri and Kentucky — are enforcing abortion bans and a half-dozen others have implemented early gestational restrictions, according to the Guttmacher Institute, a research group that supports abortion rights. Abortion also remains unavailable in Wisconsin, due to 19th-century abortion prohibitions that weren’t enforced under Roe but were never taken off the books.

Nearly half of OB-GYN residents nationwide are training in states that ban or severely restrict abortion, according to Stanford School of Medicine researchers in a December 2022 article published in the journal Current Opinion in Obstetrics and Gynecology.

“This threatens to create a workforce without critical early pregnancy management knowledge and skills,” the article stated.

To Reisinger-Kindle, the lack of abortion training is alarming, in part because these skills can be critical in emergencies like life-threating pregnancies and miscarriages.

“It’s scary because there are already so few of us who do this work,” he said, referring to the dearth of abortion training. “So if we make training even a little bit limited, we could quickly have a crisis. If we don’t already count this a crisis.”

Since Roe’s demise, more than 60 clinics in 15 states have either shut down or ceased offering abortions, according to a Guttmacher Institute report in October.

But some have relocated to new states with abortion-friendly laws. North Dakota’s only abortion clinic moved from Fargo to Moorhead, Minnesota, in summer 2022. After the fall of Roe, an abortion provider in Bristol, Tennessee, relocated about a mile to Bristol, Virginia, where terminating a pregnancy remained legal. After closing several Texas locations, Whole Woman’s Health opened a new abortion clinic in New Mexico earlier this year.

“It has been our honor to serve Texans for nearly two decades, and although Texas officials and the U.S. Supreme Court turned their back on Texans, we never will,” the abortion provider said in a GoFundMe account raising funds for the new clinic.

An image of a chubby-cheeked, dark-skinned baby girl smiles on the screen of Reisinger-Kindle’s phone.

He and his partner recently finalized the adoption of their daughter, who is about 6 months old. Both dads will be celebrating their first Father’s Day as parents on Sunday.

“We love kids,” he said. “This is not what this is about. This is about where people are in their life that day, in that moment, and helping support them to be healthy humans moving forward. The true definition of health — physical, mental, emotional and financial.”

Raising a daughter — particularly a woman of color — has only affirmed his commitment to fighting for abortion access. He is also an anti-racism researcher, and one of Equity Clinic’s priorities is addressing common health care disparities, particularly those facing people of color and the LGBTQ community.

Reisinger-Kindle believes abortion is controversial because many people don’t understand the myriad personal, medical, social and financial issues surrounding the decisions of individual patients.

“Our patients don’t wake up and flip a coin and have a decision to terminate a pregnancy,” he said. “Their lives in that moment, that is the best choice for them. For some families, it’s adoption. For some families, it’s birth. For others, it’s not.”

An armed security guard greets patients and guests at the front door of Equity Clinic, which remains locked except when patients and staff are entering or exiting.

“You have to keep people safe,” Reisinger-Kindle said. “Your staff and your patients should be safe. Nothing else matters.”

Reproductive clinics have seen an unprecedented level of violence, threats and harassment in the last year or so. The National Abortion Federation’s 2022 Violence and Disruption Statistics report showed a surge in arsons, burglaries, death threats and stalking at abortion providers compared to 2021.

“In a year marked by a devastating Supreme Court decision that overturned Roe v. Wade, and subsequent state abortion bans, anti-abortion extremists were emboldened and traveled to states where abortion remained legal to target clinics there,” the report found.

Violence and vandalism have continued to plague Illinois abortion clinics this year.

In January, an Illinois man was accused of setting fire to a Planned Parenthood Health Center roughly 90 miles away in Peoria, allegedly with the intention of delaying abortion care there.

Tyler Massengill, 32, of Chillicothe, in February pleaded guilty to setting the blaze. He told authorities that he was upset after a former girlfriend had an abortion several years ago in Peoria. The fire caused “a little delay” in another person receiving services at the health center. Massengill said it might have been “all worth it,” according to a criminal complaint.

Then in May came the attack on the planned clinic in Danville, whose leaders had passed an ordinance earlier that month that banned the mailing and shipping of abortion pills. Philip Buyno, 73, of Prophetstown, faces attempted arson charges in that case. Buyno told police he packed his car with tires, firewood and gasoline, and intended to light the vehicle on fire once it was fully inside the building, according to a criminal complaint.

The building, which was partially destroyed, is less than 40 miles from Equity Clinic.

“If I could sneak in with a gas can and a match, I would go in there again,” Buyno told federal investigators, according to the complaint.

In contrast, Reisinger-Kindle said the community in Champaign has been “amazing” and very welcoming.

He pointed to a display of thank-you cards sent to the clinic from patients, area residents and local organizations.

“This has been the hardest and most painful journey we have ever had, and the grief is unbearable,” one note reads. “However. Being in your exceptional care was one less thing we had to worry about.”

“I want to say thank you for the services you provide to the women of central Illinois and beyond!” reads another card sent from a nearby women’s health nurse practitioner.

“Thank you for showing up in people’s vulnerable moments with compassion and care,” a third card said.

“This is my purpose,” Reisinger-Kindle said. “Every single (patient) we saw, the second they’re leaving this building, their life is changed. Completely.”

The Associated Press contributed.

eleventis@chicagotribune.com