If you’d asked the student leaders of Planned Parenthood Gen Action, an activist group at the University of Illinois’ flagship Urbana-Champaign campus, if they could have imagined their movement affecting the entire state, they’d have said no. But that’s what happened, and this group of early-20-somethings had only one word to describe how it felt: surreal.
“When I first joined PPGA, that first day on Quad Day, I never thought that we would come this far,” said Karen A., the group’s current vice president and former health policy director. (She asked Salon not to publish her last name out of concern for her family’s immigration status.) “Obviously, I wanted to make a difference on campus and help students feel seen and supported. But to see our work go so far as to help so many other people across Illinois university and college campuses, is just mind-blowing to me.”
The students of PPGA at UIUC started the 2025-26 academic year by scoring a huge win. Last month, Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker, a likely 2028 Democratic presidential candidate, signed HB3709 into law, a bill that requires health centers at public colleges and universities to provide students with contraceptives and the abortion pill. This all stemmed from the PPGA activists’ 2023 campaign to implement that policy at Urbana-Champaign through a campus referendum. With this statewide legislation, Illinois becomes the first state in the Midwest to require access to abortion care in public institutions of higher education.
“It is so surreal to just see where all of this has gone, especially being there for the original writing of the referendum,” Katie Holland, PPGA at UIUC co-president, told Salon. “I’ve seen this referendum since its birth, and it is just absolutely mind-blowing to me that this became what it did.”
One of two reproductive health bills Pritzker signed into law in late August, HB3709 amends the state’s Public Higher Education Act to require any public university or college that offers student health services to provide access to contraceptives and access to professionals who can prescribe medication abortion (better known as the abortion pill). It also requires referral agreements with outside providers that can provide gynecological services, in case someone has complications from a medication abortion or needs further consultation.
The bill passed along party lines in the Illinois House and Senate last spring, where Democrats in each chamber hold majorities of about 20 votes. In a press release, Pritzker’s office championed the legislation as a fulfillment of his campaign promise and a step toward challenging the efforts of “anti-choice extremists” to curtail abortion access across the country.
“Six years ago, I made a promise to the women of this state: As governor, I will ensure that your medical decisions will be your own,” Pritzker said. “Today is another step forward in fulfilling that promise.”
The work that made the bill possible started more than a year earlier, Holland said, in a PPGA board meeting during the spring term of the 2023-24 academic year meant as a brainstorming session on how to effect change on campus. The group had successfully advocated the previous year for the student health center to provide emergency contraceptives, also through a campus referendum, and wanted to push for more.
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That’s when access to mifepristone, the principal medication used to induce an abortion, came up. Abortion is legal in Illinois up to the point of fetal viability, meaning around 24 to 26 weeks of pregnancy, with no restrictions. That was a result of the 2019 Reproductive Health Act, which recognized access to abortion and reproductive care as fundamental rights. Still, access varies across the state, from the dense urban and suburban landscape of Chicago to rural agricultural regions of southern Illinois. Medication abortion was difficult for college students, partly because patients from other Midwestern states were seeking care in Illinois facilities.
“So we were like, ‘What if students could get this on campus? We have this health center. What if we could put it there?’” said Holland, who was PPGA treasurer at the time. The group’s universal feeling, she said, was, “This is a great idea. Let’s see if we can do this.”
Student activists started handing out flyers, urging their peers to vote during student council meetings and those of other campus groups, and posting on social media, Karen A. said. In the student council elections of February 2024, the group put campus access to mifepristone on the ballot, and nearly three-quarters of the 6,354 students who voted supported the proposal, according to Illinois Public Media’s Student Newsroom.
Despite that overwhelming support, UIUC administrators initially refused to provide the abortion pill on campus, with the executive director of the McKinley Health Center telling the outlet that the facility lacked “the expertise in-house to provide abortion services” but would refer students, through the center’s website, to nearby providers.
“There was a lot of support from people from my town, simply because they’re seeing these young people do something that is so important to them, and especially in a time where people felt kind of at a loss.”
Holland said that she and the other PPGA board members “were crushed” at the time, but did not back down. They received support that fall from Planned Parenthood of Illinois, which awarded the student group its 2024 Trailblazer Award and honored them in a ceremony in Chicago. After the students’ acceptance speech, they were approached by a handful of Democratic state lawmakers who wanted to lend their support. When Emma Darbro, then the PPGA president, discussed the referendum effort at an Illinois State University conference dedicated to women’s health, Pritzker’s office noticed.
Further momentum built, and what followed was a months-long lobbying effort in the Illinois General Assembly, with lawmakers, including state Rep. Anna Moeller, a Democrat and the primary bill sponsor, considering the legislation and signing on as co-sponsors.
Days of lobbying started early, Karen A. said, with a briefing from the statewide Planned Parenthood organizers. Then they’d head to the Capitol in Springfield in the afternoon and find state lawmakers from their districts, telling them about the policies and the barriers they faced as college students in accessing abortion care, including stigma, lack of financial resources and geographical distance.
Darbro, who graduated in spring 2025, and another student leader, Grace Hosey, testified before legislative committees to move the bill along.
“I feel like being there, actually in person, talking to them, putting a name to a face, helped these lawmakers realize that these policies aren’t just a paper that they sign,” Karen A. said in an interview. “These are actually affecting real people. They affect people in their own communities and students like us.”
PPGA at UIUC also garnered support from PPGA chapters at other schools across the state, who came to the Capitol to support them. Bianca O’Shea, now the group’s special events coordinator, told Salon that residents in her hometown of Ottawa, a small city southwest of Chicago, supported the group’s efforts.
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“There was a lot of support from people from my town,” she said, “simply because they’re seeing these young people do something that is so important to them, and especially in a time where a lot of people felt kind of at a loss.” The Planned Parenthood clinic in Ottawa had closed, she said, “and at that point, we were a little unsure on what to do.”
HB3709 made its way through the Illinois legislature in April and May and was signed into law by Pritzker on Aug. 22, with Darbro, Holland and other student activists on hand to witness.
“To be recognized as an organization for the work that we’ve done is so rewarding,” Holland said. “It really makes me — and I’m sure everybody else — feel seen as college students, because sometimes you feel a little bit powerless as an individual, that your individual voice doesn’t matter. To be shown that it really does, that what students say, what they believe, the work that we do as a group matters and people are listening” is highly gratifying, she concluded.
A few weeks into the school year, university health centers are now tasked with implementing the new mandates. PPGA leaders hope to continue educating their peers on sexual health and reproductive justice. O’Shea has a meeting planned in October to educate students on supporting abortion patients and others who openly discuss sexual health issues. More activities are in the works.
With many state legislatures in Republican-dominated states working to curb abortion rights across the country, supported by Supreme Court rulings and the Trump administration’s executive actions, student leaders say they hope their group’s success will empower others — not just college students, but Americans of all backgrounds — to continue fighting for their rights.
“You’ve got to have the courage to speak up. You can’t just give up,” Holland said. “Yeah, with the referendum, they weren’t able to implement it right away. But did we give up? No, and look at where we are now.”
