Illinois is seeing a sharp influx of abortion seekers from other states since the Supreme Court overturned 1973’s Roe v. Wade decision six months ago.
The Chicago Tribune reported the state, which enshrined abortion into law, is the prime destination for women seeking to terminate their pregnancies from all over the Midwest.
Planned Parenthood officials in Illinois and Wisconsin have launched a partnership to increase abortion access, which includes physicians and other staff from Wisconsin traveling across state lines to provide abortion care at a clinic in Waukegan. https://t.co/Dlj6ApkMcQ
— Chicago Tribune (@chicagotribune) July 14, 2022
The percentage of patients from outside Illinois’ borders exploded from roughly 6% before Roe’s end to now about a third. This led Eric Scheidler, executive director of the Pro-Life Action League, to declare his state has become “the abortion capital of the U.S.”
He declared that abortionists and the state government are actively working to “draw women here from across the region.”
These women, he added, are simply being told they need abortions in Illinois. They are not offered “affordable housing, or adequate health care, or better child options, just abortion.”
Planned Parenthood of Illinois said they regularly saw dozens of patients from other states before the high court’s June 24 decision. That number has now swelled into the hundreds every month.
Jennifer Welch, president and CEO of the organization, said that the number of women from other states flooding Illinois has reached “a historic high.” Abortions were previously done for travelers from 10 to 15 other states every month, but that was before June.
Now, Welch said, that number climbed to 31 states besides Illinois. The number from Wisconsin exploded tenfold. She further noted that Planned Parenthood has more women crossing state lines from Tennessee, Missouri, Kentucky, and Texas than ever.
The organization has 17 locations in the state that perform abortions. Most of the travelers now come from the Midwest and South.
Currently, there are 16 states that have sweeping abortion restrictions, though four of them are tied up in legal battles. Several new laws and so-called “trigger bans” were enacted after June’s historic Supreme Court decision.
Illinois is pressing on to be the abortion provider for the U.S., and the shameful industry is thriving within its borders. Clearly, the post-Roe nation did not wipe away abortion, as proponents feared, but merely concentrated it into areas that support ending the lives of unborn children.
