As the Coronavirus pandemic wears on, government officials have shut down schools and businesses while stressing social distancing. The work continues to get personal protective equipment (PPE) into the hands of medical personnel with even elective surgeries canceled for the foreseeable future. However, the pandemic hasn’t slowed down the abortion industry. Several states have tried to close abortion clinics, calling the procedure an elective surgery that would take up medical resources, and Planned Parenthood has fought back in the courts to keep their doors open.

Only the state of Texas placed an outright ban on abortions as elective surgeries until the end of the pandemic. On April 7, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the ban that Texas governor Greg Abbott put in place categorizing an abortion as an elective surgery. Planned Parenthood has petitioned the case to the U.S. Supreme Court. Other states that have deemed abortions to be elective surgeries are Alaska, Indiana, Iowa, Mississippi, Ohio, and Oklahoma. The Oklahoma ban was blocked in court April 6.

In an April 3 letter to supporters, Jennifer Welch, president & CEO of Planned Parenthood of Illinois (PPIL), shared, “To best serve our patients during this crisis, we have temporarily consolidated into six ‘Mission Health Centers’ to provide essential services including medical and in-clinic abortion care.” The six centers are located in Aurora, Flossmoor, Peoria, Springfield, and two in Chicago. However, eyewitnesses have noted that the Planned Parenthood in Fairview Heights has continued to receive patients.

National Planned Parenthood as well as PPIL have also continued to fund-raise heavily during the pandemic. In an apparent reference to the states that that don’t consider abortions essential medical procedures, Welch wrote, “We are also taking action against those who attempt to use the pandemic as an excuse to restrict health care for millions of people across the country.”

Abortions continue in Metro East area

In Illinois, the abortion industry is still going strong. The 18,000-square-foot Planned Parenthood abortion clinic built in secrecy in Fairview Heights and just 13 miles away from downtown St. Louis, Mo., has been a source of controversy since it opened in October 2019.

Angela Michael is a pro-life activist and head of Small Victories Pregnancy Outreach. Michael, a former obstetrical nurse, protests regularly outside the clinic in Fairview Heights and a nearby clinic in Granite City, called Hope Clinic. The latter is a privately-owned women’s health clinic that mainly provides abortions and sits across the street from the city’s only hospital.

Hope Clinic tweeted Governor JB Pritzker to complain about, and called the local police to disband, a group of protestors outside the clinic March 27. The group consisted of Michael and three others. Four police officers arrived, and Michael shared in a Facebook message that, perhaps upon seeing the body camera she was wearing, they told the pro-life advocates to “Have a nice day.”

Michael publishes eyewitness accounts from the two clinics almost daily to the Small Victories Pregnancy Outreach Facebook page. She has been noting the large groups of people entering the clinics, failing to practice social distancing, and cars traveling there from as far away as Colorado.

According to the Guttmacher Institute, there were 40 facilities providing abortions in Illinois in 2017, and 25 of those were abortion clinics.

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The ACLU has filed a lawsuit on behalf of Dr. Allison Cowett and Hope Clinic for Women Ltd. to stop Illinois’ parental notification law from taking effect on Nov. 3, 2009. This law requires that minor girls under the age of 18 notify their parents prior to an abortion and wait 48 hours. Note that this is merely a parentalnotification law– not a parental consent law. In addition, Illinois, like all 34 other states that have parental notification laws, has a judicial bypass option available to girls. In addition, girls can bypass parental notification in an emergency situation or if they are willing to declare in writing that they were raped.

According to a Chicago Tribune article, Dr. Allison Cowett and the Hope Clinic claim that “the notification law would harm minors by preventing them from obtaining safe abortions or force them to carry their pregnancies to term.” This is an ironic claim coming from a clinic that is being sued for a botched abortion that left a now 20-year-old woman sterile. According to LifeNews.com, “Antoinette Blanton, who is 20, filed a $50,000 against the abortion center saying the failed March 2006 abortion caused her to be sterile. According to the lawsuit, abortion practitioner Allen S. Palmer, of Bridgeton, failed to remove the entire unborn child during the abortion procedure.” 

Dr. Cowett, a committed pro-abortion advocate, and the Hope Clinic further claim that “Others (minor girls) will be beaten or thrown out of their homes when their parents learn of their pregnancy and planned abortion.” But the judicial bypass option is available to any girl who fears such a response. It hardly seems fair to deny all loving, compassionate parents a right to help their daughters make a decision regarding major surgery that carries both serious physical risks and potentially long-term emotional consequences because some girls may choose not to avail themselves of the judicial bypass option.

Dr. Cowett is an assistant professor of Clinical Obstetrics and Gynecology at the University of Illinois College of Medicine in Chicago and director of the University of Illinois at Chicago’s Center of Reproductive Health. Her research “focuses on abortion in the 2nd trimester, factors affecting women’s contraceptive choices, and access to family planning services.” According to her biography, she is “active in community-wide efforts to forward a legislative agenda that champion’s women’s reproductive freedom.” Apparently, she wants to champion teenage girl’s right to kill even younger pre-born girls through both legislative and judicial means.

And she’s willing to forge an unholy alliance with a clinic that has long been criticized by pro-life warriors for myriad offenses against humanity and sound medical practice. Retired ob-gyn nurse Angela Michael and her husband Daniel have been struggling mightily for seventeen long years to expose the nefarious deeds of the grossly misnamed “Hope” Clinic. According to Mrs. Michael, approximately 80 percent of abortions come from across state lines which suggests that most of the abortions are performed on minor girls. Illinois has long been the Midwest’s abortion mecca for underage girls, since all of the surrounding states have parental notification laws. The Hope Clinic is just a hop, skip, and short car ride from Missouri where underage girls would need to notify their parents prior to procuring an abortion. To learn more about the Hope Clinic, peruse Angela and Daniel Michael’s website Small Victories Ministries.

At least as troubling is that Hope Clinic performs the utterly barbaric practice of late-term abortions. Dr. Yogendra Shah is the George Tiller of Hope Clinic. According to the Thomas More Society in Chicago “Shah is perhaps the Midwest’s most wicked abortionist. He’s the notorious serial killer who once clogged the municipal sewer system with the arms, legs, rib cages, and heads of aborted babies. Municipal officials were shocked. They traced the body parts to Shah’s ghastly abortion mill, the so-called “Hope Clinic for Women” in Granite City, Illinois . . . he kills about 10,000 babies a year. No wonder he can afford an expensive watch and a Mercedes and a Lexus.” This is the same man who “tried to run Daniel over. . .And then. . . glared at Angela. . . and shouted, ‘Die, Angela, Die!'”

One can’t help but wonder if the chief concern of doctors at Hope Clinic is really the health and safety of underage girls. Someone needs to look into how much money teen abortions generate for the Hope Clinic. 

And we all need to pray fervently for two things: first, that the ACLU, Dr. Allison Cowett, and Hope Clinic lose their lawsuit, and second, that the Hope abattoir closes its blood-stained doors forever.