Pro-life advocates in the midwest are stepping up to meet the growing challenge of reaching pregnant mothers who consider traveling out of state to abort their unborn babies.
This week, the Illinois-based Pro-Life Action League launched an outdoor advertising campaign reminding women that there’s still time to reverse course and find help for themselves and their babies.
On Interstate 90 crossing from Indiana into Illinois, the pro-life organization set up a new billboard: “Looking for a sign? This is it: CancelMyAbortion.com,” it reads. The website directs women to information and free resources for pregnant and parenting moms.
“We know that most abortions are unwanted — desperately unwanted,” executive director Eric J. Scheidler said. “And so often, women are looking for a sign in the midst of this desperation. This billboard is their sign.”
All of the states bordering Illinois protect, or are trying to protect, unborn babies with laws that prohibit elective abortions. Neighboring Missouri, for example, prohibits all elective abortions and lawmakers there have been working to expand support services for pregnant and parenting families in need, including through Medicaid, child care and adoption tax credits, according to Campaign Life Missouri.
But part of the problem is making sure women know about these resources – especially with the challenges of online censorship and efforts to malign pregnancy resource centers.
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The overturning of Roe v. Wade brought new life-saving opportunities but also new challenges for the pro-life movement. Currently, 15 states protect unborn babies by banning abortions and others like Indiana are fighting in court to do the same.
But abortion activists also have become even more aggressive in their attempts to pressure women to have abortions. California pro-abortion Gov. Gavin Newsom paid for billboards in pro-life states that tell women to go to California to abort their unborn babies. Other states budgeted tax dollars to pay for out-of-state women to come there for abortions. There are private abortion funds that help women pay for abortion travel, too.
In Illinois where pro-abortion Democrats control the state legislature, politicians are maligning pregnancy resource centers and other pro-life charities that help families in need. A radical pro-abortion bill on Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s desk could shut down pro-life pregnancy centers across the state, denying mothers and babies critical, life-saving services.
Scheidler said Illinois saw a 29-percent increase in out-of-state abortions in 2020, and they believe that number has grown since the Dobbs v. Jackson ruling.
And, according to Sidewalk Advocates for Life, it’s been more difficult to help women choose life for their babies once they have invested the time and money into traveling for an abortion.
Still, pro-lifers know that many women consider aborting their unborn babies out of fear and desperation, and many choose life when they learn that support is available. So, they are finding new ways to spread the word.
“If you’re an economically disadvantaged woman in Illinois, the only choice Pritzker and the General Assembly want to offer you is abortion,” Scheidler said. “But we know when they’re given the help they really need, most women reject abortion. That’s why we’re reaching out through this new billboard campaign.”
Pro-Life Action League launched its first billboard this week, but another is scheduled to go up on Interstate 94 just south of the Wisconsin border later this summer, and the organization is considering more locations in the future.
In Missouri, pro-lifers also are working to make sure women receive information about the support available to pregnant and parenting families.
The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reports Gov. Mike Parson allocated $266,000 this year for a new marketing campaign to promote the free resources through the state Alternatives to Abortion program, whose agencies offer numerous services from child care and housing, to parenting and job training, to domestic abuse protection and mental health counseling, to food, clothing and pregnancy/parenting supplies.
Choose Life Marketing, the group working with Missouri on the campaign, is tasked with building a website with a searchable database based on the woman’s needs and creating ads on social media to reach women considering abortion. It hopes to “reach pregnant women at risk for having abortions when [Alternatives to Abortion] agencies are blocked or in any other way suppressed by any search engine, social media platform, or digital advertising network,” according to the governor’s plan.
Scheidler at the Pro-Life Action League said pro-lifers are striving to provide much-needed hope and help to struggling women — and saves lives.
“We’re letting women know that they do not have to go through with abortions they do not want. Help is available — the kind of help that will allow them to follow their hearts and choose life for their unborn babies,” he said.
