FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Amy Gehrke, Executive Director
312-422-9300
Over 10,000 Women Came to Illinois for Abortions in 2020 –
An Increase of Approximately 29 Percent.
The following statement may be attributed to Amy Gehrke, Executive Director of Illinois Right to Life:
The Chicago Tribune reported today that the number of women traveling to Illinois to obtain abortions increased by over 29 percent between 2019 and 2020. This is no surprise since Planned Parenthood and the abortion industry in our state are actively luring women from our neighboring states to Illinois for abortion. Between 2018 and 2020, Planned Parenthood opened “regional abortion centers’ on our state’s borders with Indiana, Wisconsin, and Missouri—states with pro-life laws that protect the preborn. Clearly, this strategy has worked.
Later this year, we expect that the U.S. Supreme Court will roll back or even overturn Roe v. Wade. When that happens, we fully expect the number of women traveling to Illinois for abortions to skyrocket even further.
The Alan Guttmacher Institute recently reported stating that Illinois is currently home to the closest abortion provider for approximately 100,000 out-of-state women. The Guttmacher projects that number will explode and that Illinois abortion clinics will be the nearest abortion providers for approximately 8.9 million women. Since Governor J.B. Pritzker recently signed the repeal of Illinois’s Parental Notice of Abortion law, minor girls, many times at the urging of abusers, can now come to Illinois for abortions without their parents ever knowing.
Illinois Right to Life and our sister organization, Illinois Right to Life Action, are committed to preventing this abortion catastrophe through education. Illinoisans need to know how extreme and out of the mainstream Illinois abortion laws are and that many of our elected officials care more about increasing the profits of the abortion industry than they care about representing the will of their constituents.
Illinois Right to Life is the state’s oldest and largest pro-life organization. We seek to protect humans threatened by abortion, infanticide, and euthanasia through education and direct aid.
###