Illinois lawmakers’ actions to expand abortions worked.
About 4,000 more unborn babies were aborted in the state in 2019 compared to the year prior, according to newly released statistics from the Illinois Department of Public Health.
In total, more than 46,500 abortions were done in Illinois in 2019, an almost 10 percent increase from 2018, the Chicago Tribune reports.
Pro-life leaders blamed the increase, in part, on a 2018 state law that forces taxpayers to fund abortions and a 2019 law that allows unborn babies to be aborted for any reason up to birth and forces every state insurance plan to cover abortions.
Eric Scheidler, executive director of the Pro-Life Action League, told the Tribune that the new data is “horrifying” but “predictable” because of state lawmakers’ actions.
“Illinois has become an abortion destination,” Scheidler said.
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According to the statistics, Illinois also saw an increase in women coming from other states to have abortions. In 2019, about 7,500 abortions were done on out-of-state women and their unborn babies, about 2,000 more than 2018, the data shows.
That year, Planned Parenthood opened a huge new abortion facility on the border near St. Louis. Missouri has pro-life laws that help prevent abortions, and currently there is only one abortion facility in the state.
The spike also coincides with the pro-abortion laws that passed the state legislature in 2018 and 2019. Abortion numbers rose in 2018 as well after the law forcing taxpayers to fund abortions went into effect.
Peter Breen, vice president and senior counsel for the Thomas More Society, a pro-life legal group based in Chicago, said the legislature does not represent state residents’ views.
“The abortion industry in Illinois now has a stranglehold on our state government, and those radical elected officials should be responsible for the hike in abortions in Illinois,” Breen told the newspaper. “The views of the people of Illinois on abortion are not being represented by our elected officials.”
Though Illinois has radical pro-abortion laws, abortion activists want more. Right now, they are pressuring state lawmakers to end one of the few protections left: a law that requires parental notification before an underage girl may have an abortion. Without the law, young girls could get secret abortions – or be forced into them by an abuser – without their parents’ knowledge or consent.
Reports from the Centers for Disease Control and the Guttmacher Institute indicate that abortions have dropped to an all-time low in recent years as pro-life advocates pass laws, educate people about the truth and provide hope and help mothers and babies in need. The latest report from the CDC found a 2 percent drop in the abortion rate from 2016 to 2018.
Still, almost 1 million unborn babies are aborted in the U.S. every year and nearly 63 million have been aborted since Roe v. Wade in 1973.
President Joe Biden’s federal budget proposal, if approved, would almost certainly increase abortions by eliminating the Hyde Amendment and forcing taxpayers to fund elective abortions. The Hyde Amendment has saved about 2.5 million unborn babies from abortion, according to research by the Charlotte Lozier Institute.
