Devastating: Illinois sees 10% rise in abortions in just one year
Illinois | June 24, 2021
Newly released data from the Illinois Department of Public Health (IDPH) shows that abortions jumped by 10% in just one year, from over 42,000 to over 46,000, according to the Chicago Tribune.
In 2018, 42,400 women had abortions in Illinois, and women from out of state comprised roughly 13% of that total or about 5,500 abortions. By contrast, in 2019 the Tribune reported that 46,500 women underwent abortions in Illinois, with more than 7,500, or roughly 16%, committed on residents of other states. (At press time, 2019 statistics were not yet publicly available on the IDPH website.) This increase is particularly striking in the context of a nearly one percent increase in abortions nationwide, according to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) data for 2018.
The increase is hardly a surprise given Illinois’ extremely abortion-permissive laws. The summer of 2019 saw the passage of the Reproductive Health Act that both enshrined abortion as a “fundamental right” in state law and erased virtually every abortion restriction on the books up until that time. These legislative changes predictably led to Illinois being dubbed an “abortion tourism” destination for out-of-state women seeking abortions, especially as surrounding states beef up restrictions on abortion with mandatory waiting periods, parental notification or consent requirements for minors, mandatory provision of care on babies who survive abortions, and more. Consequently, abortions on out-of-state women have consistently increased year over year in Illinois since 2014…
(Excerpts from LIVEACTION)