University of Illinois Chicago now lets law students earn federal work study wages at Planned Parenthood.
Planned Parenthood of Illinois, the nation's largest abortion provider, just became an approved work study employer.
Federal financial aid is now paying wages inside an abortion clinic.
Law Students Can Earn $19 an Hour at Planned Parenthood
Campus Reform first reported that UIC's School of Law approved Planned Parenthood of Illinois as a "qualified agency" for its federal work study program.
Federal work study exists to help lower income students pay for school by working part time, often for nonprofits in their community.
Planned Parenthood of Illinois commits both chemical and surgical abortions.
Under the arrangement, students can earn more than $19 an hour, working up to 20 hours a week during the school year and 29 hours a week over the summer.
That money is meant to help students pay tuition, not staff the front desk of an abortion business.
A Nursing Fellowship Is Training Illinois Clinicians to Do Abortions
UIC's School of Nursing is running two fellowships of its own, called RADIANT and RADIANT ED, each paying a $5,000 stipend.
RADIANT trains providers to become abortionists and teaches medical students how to perform the procedure.
RADIANT ED focuses on emergency rooms, training ER clinicians to commit abortions and pushing hospitals to remove what the program calls "institutional challenges" to abortion access.
That fellowship exists because of a 2024 state law, the Hospital Emergency Service Act, which requires Illinois emergency rooms to provide abortions during medical emergencies.
Sixty Illinois clinicians have already gone through the training, and related events have drawn nearly 200 clinicians, students, and advocates.
Illinois Governor JB Pritzker has publicly praised the program.
Two Million Taxpayer Dollars Helped Pay for the Program
None of this runs on private donations alone.
The Illinois Department of Public Health handed out a $2 million grant for abortion related training, split between UIC's College of Nursing, the Midwest Access Project, and Planned Parenthood of Illinois directly.
Illinois taxpayers are funding the training pipeline and the paychecks on the same campus.
Planned Parenthood's Own Student Group Lobbied This Into Existence
Someone built this pipeline on purpose.
The whole push traces back to a 2024 student referendum at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, organized by Planned Parenthood Illinois Action's campus chapter, Generation Action.
That referendum turned into a state law, signed in 2025, requiring every public college in Illinois with a pharmacy to dispense contraception and chemical abortion pills on campus starting with the 2025-2026 school year.
Jess Sturges, a program manager for Planned Parenthood Illinois Action, said the student chapter made sure of it.
"These students lobbied in Springfield, testified in Springfield and called for witness slips to ensure the legislation passed," Sturges said.
Grace Hosey, the chapter's co-president, called the student support "overwhelming."
Illinois Taxpayers Just Joined Planned Parenthood's Billion Dollar Pattern
This is not new territory for Planned Parenthood.
A Government Accountability Office review found that Planned Parenthood and similar groups collected more than 1.5 billion dollars in federal money between 2013 and 2015, mostly through Medicaid.
Senator Joni Ernst, who requested the review, did not mince words.
"This report once again illustrates the absurd amount of taxpayer dollars funding the nation's single largest provider of abortion services, Planned Parenthood," Ernst said.
Ernst has already championed the Protect Funding for Women's Health Care Act, legislation that would redirect that money toward federally qualified health centers, the community clinics that provide checkups, prenatal care, and screenings without performing a single abortion.
Illinois just gave Congress a fresh, campus sized example of exactly why that bill exists.
A law student's work study check and a nursing fellowship stipend are small line items next to a billion and a half dollars, but they are built from the same math.
If your senator has not signed on to that redirect, this is the story to send them.
Sources:
- Cassy Cooke, "University of Illinois Chicago Approves Planned Parenthood for Work-Study Jobs," Live Action, September 2026.
- Campus Reform, "UIC Law Approves Abortion Provider Planned Parenthood for Federal Work-Study Jobs," Campus Reform, September 2026.
- Seth Segal, "University of Illinois Chicago Offers Clinicians $5K Stipend to Complete Abortion Training," The Gateway Pundit, August 2026.
- Planned Parenthood Illinois Action, press release on passage of campus contraception and medication abortion access bill, 2025.
- Office of Senator Joni Ernst, "GAO Report Finds Billions of Tax Dollars Fund Abortion Providers," U.S. Senate, 2016.
