A McLean County-based new leader at Planned Parenthood of Illinois [PPI] is relentlessly focused on providing affordable care to anyone who needs it, all across Illinois.
Carolyn Moon, who lives just outside Bloomington-Normal and took the board chair position this month, is the first person from outside the Chicago area to serve in the role. She said she brings a different perspective on rural healthcare.
"I really am an advocate for access for everyone in the state, corner to corner, today, tomorrow, and for future generations," Moon said on WGLT's Sound Ideas.
Funding challenges
The Trump administration's signature spending legislation, the 2025 Big Beautiful Bill, defunded Planned Parenthood by name.
This was a setback, Moon said, though funding was recently reinstated.
"I think they understand the support that we have. I think it's misogyny, I think it's anti-trans kind of talking points, that the current administration has right now," said Moon.
Bloomington's Planned Parenthood clinic closed late last year, due to financial pressures. However, Moon said Planned Parenthood is still committed to McLean County. Patients can still access nearly all of the services they need through virtual telehealth options. The locations in Peoria, Champaign and Springfield have also been helping Bloomington-Normal patients.
Serving the Midwest
Moon said reproductive healthcare has changed in Illinois since the Supreme Court's 2022 Dobbs decision, which removed the federal constitutional right to obtain an abortion.
"I am so proud to live in a state that values and respects sexual and reproductive autonomy," Moon said, noting state laws which preserve abortion access. "However, there's a lot of states around us that have no access to abortion, even in the event of a life threatening situation with the mother. We've received a lot of out-of-state patients seeking abortions, and we've provided lifesaving care."
Iowa recently increased restrictions on medical abortions, no longer allowing a telehealth option to receive prescriptions. Indiana has banned almost all abortions, but does provide exceptions, including in case of risk to the mother's life. In Wisconsin, the state Supreme Court ruled abortions legal, but funding issues can sometimes prevent them. As of this summer, abortion is legal in Missouri, but the state has gone back and forth. Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker recently signed into law newly passed legislation preventing abortion health records with out-of-state entities, where obtaining an abortion may be illegal.
Moon said patients have traveled to Illinois from as far away as Pennsylvania to receive healthcare, including but not limited to abortion.
Moon recalls meeting a Missouri man while volunteering at PPI's Springfield clinic.
"I talked to a man in the parking lot who had brought his wife from Missouri. Their fetus was in distress and was not going to survive. But she personally was getting so sick and so ill. And her doctor in Missouri could not provide an abortion for her, even though she was in medical danger. He got her in the car, drove her to the Springfield health center and got her the lifesaving abortion she needed.
"It shouldn't be that way. It shouldn't be that hard," Moon said. "We hope that healthcare decisions will not be politicized moving forward, but we're ready for that if it is."
Moon said she sees affordable access to reproductive healthcare as crucial to a woman's sense of freedom. This motivates her to work toward access for the entire state.
"My mother told me long ago, if women do not have control of their reproductive systems, when they have children, they cannot have control of anything else in their life."
