Planned Parenthood is opening a huge new abortion business on the border of Illinois and Missouri after keeping it secret for a year.
CBS News reports the new mega-clinic is located in Fairview Heights, Illinois, just 13 miles away from St. Louis, Missouri. The abortion chain also hopes to sell abortions to women in Kentucky and Arkansas at the new facility.
Planned Parenthood is the largest abortion business in the U.S. Last year, it reported a record $1.66 billion in revenue and more than 330,000 abortions, even as patient numbers fell.
Abortion is its main business, and Colleen McNicholas, the chief medical officer of Planned Parenthood of the St. Louis Region and Southwest Missouri, said they hope to see 11,000 patients annually at the Fairview Heights facility.
She admitted that they worked hard to keep the new building a secret from the local community.
According to CBS: “Since August 2018, Planned Parenthood has used a shell company to construct the facility, leaving no public trace that the former medical office would become one of the largest abortion clinics in the country. CBS News first visited the site in August, while it was still being built.”
McNicholas tried to justify these deceptions by describing past experiences with building projects. She told CBS that some companies and contractors refuse to work with them after learning that they are an abortion business, and pro-life advocates in the communities protest their plans.
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She said they built the new mega-abortion facility under the code name “Alaska.” It cost about $7 million to build, and it will begin seeing patients within the next few weeks.
It is not clear how far along abortions will be performed. Illinois allows unborn babies to be aborted for basically any reason up to birth, and McNicholas has defended them. In August, she told the AP that “EVERY reason to have an abortion is a valid reason,” including for sex-selection and disabilities like Down syndrome.
Here’s more from the report:
With the opening of the mega-clinic nearby, they’ll be able to expand [abortion] services, said McNicholas, who added that Planned Parenthood was expanding its staffing in the region to handle both family planning and abortion services. The new facility will roughly double the existing clinic’s capacity, with the ability to serve up to 11,000 patients a year, said a spokesperson for Planned Parenthood.
Even though the new facility could absorb all of St. Louis’s patients if the clinic has to stop performing abortions, McNicholas said the new clinic doesn’t mean they’re giving up on Missouri.
Steven Aden, Chief Legal Officer and General Counsel of Americans United for Life, told LifeNews.com he’s not surprised by the news.
“How appropriate that Planned Parenthood has built a secret ‘mega-center’ to go with its mega-sized status as America’s biggest abortion business – fully one-third of all U.S. abortions are done at a Planned Parenthood facility,” he said.
He added: “Planned Parenthood loudly complains that long distances inhibit access to abortion while building its business model on the truth that they will. Given that abortions are falling precipitously all over the country as women are learning what abortion really is and does to them and their babies, the main impact of this new mega-center might be to drive Planned Parenthood St. Louis – just across the river – out of business. In light of the fact that the St. Louis abortion center has sent 74 women directly to the hospital over the last ten years, that can only be a very good thing for women in both Missouri and Illinois.”
The St. Louis Planned Parenthood has a horrendous record of health and safety violations. Earlier this year, state health officials tried to revoke its license, but Planned Parenthood sued and a judge allowed it to remain open.
The state Department of Health found dozens of health and safety violations in St. Louis, and pro-life advocates have documented 72 occasions when ambulances were called to the abortion facility for women with abortion complications. CBS News failed to mention any of these concerns and implied that the state is just trying to close the abortion facility for political reasons.
Planned Parenthood has been secretive about new abortion clinics in the past. Last year, a Michigan community expressed outrage after the abortion chain used a different name on paperwork so that it could open a new abortion facility in secret.
In Kansas, pro-life advocates recently stopped Planned Parenthood from opening a new abortion facility right next to a high school in their community. It used similarly secretive tactics in the community, but pro-life advocates found out anyway.
