CHICAGO – New abortion stats emerged this week, showing Illinois' numbers rising to nearly 40,000 annually.
Not only are more expectant mothers coming into Illinois to abort their babies because their states are passing more and more restrictions on abortions, Illinois taxpayers began picking up the tab for Medicaid abortions last year. The numbers are certain to be higher in 2018.
Abortion advocates celebrated by calling Illinois a "reproductive rights haven."
According to the 2017 report, there were 39,329 abortions in Illinois, up from 38,382 abortions in 2016. While reported abortions on Illinois residents increased approximately 0.5 percent, the number of reported abortions on out-of-state residents increased 21.6 percent from the previous year, bringing the number of abortions performed on women from out-of-state to 5,528.
“This increase is indicative of how truly regressive we are when it comes to protecting pre-born children in Illinois,” said Mary Kate Knorr, Executive Director for Illinois Right to Life. “Illinois is an outlier amongst our neighbors, whose legislatures have consulted science and found that discouraging abortions is in the best interest of their residents. Terry Cosgrove’s Personal PAC spends absurd amounts of money in elections to intimidate our legislature to maintain the extremely pro-abortion majority in Springfield.”
Cosgrove says abortion restrictions are not to protect innocent lives, but to stifle women's automony.
“So many states around us are enacting dangerous restrictions that put the health and lives of women at risk, so women have no choice really but to come to Illinois,” he told the Chicago Tribune. “It isn’t anything but pure misogyny.”
Cosgrove has spent hundreds of thousands of dollars over the past few election cycles to strangle the growing prolife caucus in the Illinois House. In one fell swoop a month ago, Cosgrove eliminated an array of Republican prolife lawmakers and knocked off prolife Republican candidate Erika Harold in the attorney general race.
“Illinois is critical to the abortion industry's bottom line, and our extremely pro-abortion General Assembly is its puppet on a string,” continued Knorr. “These numbers will continue to increase as long as Cosgrove and his abortion PAC continue to strong-arm our legislators.”
As a member of a younger generation, Knorr recently stepped into the role of directing Illinois Right to Life. It was deemed by many as a courageous career move into one of the nation's toughest challenges for prolife advocates.
She and the next generation of pro-life conservative leaders have a formidable task ahead of them.
