Planned Parenthood of Illinois held a ribbon-cutting ceremony on Monday for its new abortion facility, the Carbondale Health Center. The center boasts that in addition to four rooms in which abortions will be carried out by abortion pill, it has a playroom for children.
The Southern Illinoisan reported that the facility, which will be the third abortion facility in Carbondale (a location of Southern Illinois University), has “five education rooms, four procedure rooms, three exam/ultrasound rooms and a kids playroom…” It also noted, “[T]he health center expands access to reproductive health care services for Illinoisans and out-of-state-patients.”
Carbondale’s City Council passed an ordinance previously that made the city a safe haven for abortion.
Increase in out-of-state abortion clients
President and CEO of Planned Parenthood of Illinois, Jennifer Welch, claims the regional group has seen a 54% increase in abortions and has had women from 40 states travel to Illinois for abortions following the overturning of Roe v. Wade in June 2022.
“Today is an amazing day in the continued fight to expand reproductive and sexual health care access in the Carbondale community, in Southern Illinois and for people forced to flee from their home state for care,” said Welch. She added that the opening of the clinic is a step towards “equitable access to health care… including gender-affirming care, birth control options, STI testing and treatment and abortion care.”
In addition to the new Planned Parenthood location in Carbondale, the city also has two other abortion businesses: Choices Center for Reproductive Health and Alamo Women’s Reproductive Services. Welch said all three are necessary because of the increase in out-of-state abortion clients.
No one is being “forced to flee their home state for care” because abortion is not health care and is not medically necessary. No woman is forced to travel out of state to seek the planned death of their preborn child. She chooses to do so or is pressured into doing so.
A playroom for children
Planned Parenthood boasts of its playroom for children while it initiates the deaths of those children’s siblings by chemical abortion right in the same building. The Carbondale location will administer the abortion pill through 11 weeks, though this is later than FDA protocol. The abortion pill was originally approved only through week seven before that timeframe was increased to week 10 in 2016.
Siblings of children lost to abortion have expressed a “longing to have known” their aborted sibling. One sibling explained that after her mother told her of an abortion she had, “We let it drop and I forgot about it.” But, she said, she hadn’t truly forgotten.
“I didn’t think about it consciously for years,” she said. “Suddenly I found myself thinking about my little brother! I became disoriented and lost control of the car for a moment as I burst into tears having lost him. I was astounded by my reaction, but I couldn’t shake the sadness and longing to have known him.”
Another sibling of an aborted child explained she dreams of another world in which her aborted brother is grown up and married with children, and she is an aunt. Her friend explained, “She feels cheated. She feels lonelier than an only child should feel.”
Feelings of survivor’s guilt are also common, according to Dr. Philip Ney, who says that sibling survivors have “lifelong struggles about existing” after learning that their survival is based on arbitrary decisions on whether they were “wanted” or not, or whether the ‘timing’ was right for their existence.
“I have not forgotten my siblings and I never will,” one sibling survivor who attended a retreat for siblings of aborted children said. “I miss them although I never knew them.”
Racism at Planned Parenthood
Chastity Mays, a certified birth doula and owner of Hathor Doula Services, has partnered with Planned Parenthood of Illinois in part because she wants to “end the black maternal health crisis that our nation is experiencing.”
She said according to the Illinois maternal morbidity and mortality report released in October, in Illinois, Black women are twice as likely to die from any pregnancy-related condition compared to white women. She said discrimination is cited as a reason, including structural racism.
“And this is why I’m so happy to partner with Planned Parenthood of Illinois,” Mays said. She added that the area needs more healthcare facilities that have diverse employees.
Welch additionally claimed that Planned Parenthood of Illinois has an equitable and inclusive hiring process.
However, as of April 2023, more than two dozen lawsuits have been filed by former staff against Planned Parenthood alleging racism. Staffers told The Philadelphia Inquirer that racism is an inherent part of the abortion giant’s culture. As Live Action News’ Cassy Fiano-Chesser previously noted of the reported abuses, “One was an affiliate COO. Another alleged a hostile work environment where Black employees were treated ‘with disdain.’ Another woman, a Black nurse practitioner, says her manager threw a patient’s urine sample at her desk, allowing urine to splash all over her desk. Eventually, she was laid off — in retaliation, she claims, for filing complaints of racial discrimination — in 2021.”
Planned Parenthood’s history of racism goes back more than a century, beginning with its founder, Margaret Sanger, who left a legacy of racism and eugenics. The current allegations include Black employees being labeled as “angry,” and orthodox Jewish women being referred to as “birthing factories.”
Eve J. Higginbotham, the vice dean for inclusion and diversity at the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine, told the Inquirer that the number of complaints and lawsuits suggest there is a “systemic issue” of racism at Planned Parenthood.
