Abortion profoundly shaped the lives and work of these 8 Illinois women. Here are their stories.

CHICAGO — In summer 1966, 17-year-old Leta Dally and her mother were driven by a stranger to an undisclosed location on Chicago’s South Side, where the recent high school graduate had an illegal abortion.

She never knew the name of the doctor who terminated her 8-week pregnancy that night, or the exact address where the procedure took place. The driver parked the car and then walked with the teen and her mom through an alleyway to the backdoor of an indistinctive office building, which served as an underground abortion clinic operating in the years before the landmark case Roe v. Wade legalized the procedure nationwide.

“I remember what it was like before,” said 73-year-old Dally of Chicago’s Northwest Side. “Before abortion was even legal in this state or legal most places … there was a lot of shame involved. You didn’t tell people you had an abortion.”

Now Dally fears much of the nation is reverting to the laws and culture of her childhood, when she had her clandestine abortion about six decades ago.

The U.S. Supreme Court on Friday overturned Roe v. Wade, an extraordinary reversal of nearly a century of federal abortion rights. The case at hand, Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, upheld the constitutionality a 2018 Mississippi law that prohibits abortion past 15 weeks gestation, a measure designed to challenge Roe.

While a leaked draft opinion had revealed the court’s position in early May, the implications of the official ruling still reverberated across the Chicago area and Midwest, evoking strong emotions among those closest to the reproductive rights debate.

The Chicago Tribune in recent weeks interviewed eight women whose lives and work have been profoundly shaped by abortion. With the official court decision imminent, they shared their reactions