A new facility in Chicago is offering all-trimester abortions up to roughly 34 weeks of pregnancy, which pro-life advocates believe exposes the "brutal reality" of abortion laws in states like Illinois.
The Hope Clinic in southern Illinois announced on its Instagram page earlier this month that it opened another facility in Chicago's Uptown neighborhood that offers abortions throughout all pregnancy trimesters.
According to the Hope Clinic's website, the new facility offers abortions up to 34 weeks of pregnancy, while the other location in Granite City advertises abortions up to 27.6 Weeks.
"Chicago's new 'all-trimester' abortion business exposes the brutal reality in states like Illinois, where pro-abortion Democrats have total control," Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America President Marjorie Dannenfelser told The Christian Post.
"Third-trimester babies are old enough to be in the nursery or NICU," the president of one of the nation's most prominent grassroots organizations lobbying against abortion, continued. "But Governor J.B. Pritzker signed an abortion expansion bill so extreme, it even repealed state laws against partial-birth abortion."
Citing a February 2024 report by The Washington Post on donations made by a nonprofit he solely funds, Dannenfelser said Pritzker "spends millions pushing all-trimester abortion amendments in pro-life states."
Pritzker signed the Reproductive Health Act in 2019, a bill that pro-life advocates referred to as the most "extreme" late-term abortion measure in the country. In addition to repealing the state's Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act, the bill broadened the definition of abortion for the "health of the patient" to include physical, emotional, psychological, familial health and age.
Nine states and the District of Columbia have no gestational limits on abortion, according to a Kaiser Family Foundation report last updated in December 2024.
Dannenfelser argued that Illinois leaves it to the "professional judgment" of abortionists who profit from abortions to determine if a woman meets the criteria for one, referring to the phrase used by the Kaiser Family Foundation to describe the legal standard for exceptions to its abortion law prohibiting abortions after fetal viability.
"With abortions rising even after Dobbs, it's time to defund the Big Abortion industry that just can't be trusted to regulate itself," the pro-life leader stated, referring to the 2022 U.S. Supreme Court decisionDobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization that determined that the U.S. Constitution does not contain a right to abortion.
Dr. Erin King, the Hope Clinic's chief medical officer, told The Chicago Tribune this month that the facility intends to offer late-trimester abortions while operating within the bounds of the law in Illinois.
"I want people to know that we are absolutely following the law, but that we make a really careful determination," King told the outlet. "And we want to provide access to as many people as we can within the law."
The Illinois attorney general and the Pritzker administration support the all-trimester abortion facility, as The Chicago Tribune reported. While King insisted that she complies with the law, she condemned abortion restrictions based on the age and viability of the unborn child.
"Any restriction around abortion access disproportionately affects people that already have difficulty accessing any health care … the most marginalized folks," she said. "People who have lower incomes. People from health deserts. People experiencing inequities in health care due to their race."
The opening of the all-trimester abortion facility in Chicago has reignited discussions about abortions that take place later in pregnancy and why these types of abortions occur.
As Monica Snyder, the executive director of Secular Pro-Life, told CP, most Americans mistakenly believe that late-term abortions only happen in fetal anomaly cases or if the woman's life is in danger.
"This is a comforting fiction," the pro-life atheist stated. "The reality is multiple abortion clinics across the United States can legally provide abortions past 24 weeks gestation without requiring fetal or maternal medical emergencies to do so."
"In other words, they can and do abort otherwise healthy, viable babies," Snyder said.
She cited several examples of clinics that offer late-term abortions, including Partners in Abortion Care, an all-trimester abortion clinic in Maryland; the DuPont Clinic in Washington, D.C.; and the Lilith Clinic in Oregon.
Warren Hern, who performed late-term abortions in Colorado, has even stated openly, "[e]very pregnancy is a health issue."
In a 2023 interview with The Atlantic, Hern said that a baby's viability is determined by whether a woman wants the pregnancy and not by gestational age. The late-term abortionist also admitted that he had performed two sex-selective abortions.
According to a 2022 study published in Perspectives on Sexual and Reproductive Health, the reason respondents sought an abortion after 24 weeks of gestation "was not exclusively related to fetal health." The study noted that a number of women sought an abortion at 24 weeks or later due to a lack of resources to obtain one earlier or because they didn't know they were pregnant until later.
"Hope Clinic isn't the first, just the newest," Snyder concluded. "This isn't healthcare; it's brutal violence, cloaked in the language of autonomy, and all people, including pro-choice people, should oppose this extremism."
