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 peop

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