Chris Lange, FISM News
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Planned Parenthood announced plans on Monday to open its first mobile abortion clinic in Illinois near the state’s borders with Missouri and Kentucky, both of which have near-total bans on the life-ending procedure.
The mobile clinic, which will be outfitted in an RV, will provide medicated abortions (abortifacient pills) to end pregnancies up to eleven weeks of development but a spokesperson said the goal is to provide surgical abortions in the future.
“Abortion bans are about power and control over peoples’ bodies and lives,” Planned Parenthood of the St. Louis Region and Southwest Missouri, said in a press release announcing the mobile clinic. “Expanding access and meeting patients where they are gives people the power to make decisions about their health, their families, and their future.”
The mobile unit is one of several targeted abortion expansion efforts by Planned Parenthood created to circumvent bans in 17 states triggered by the Supreme Court’s June ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization that overturned federal abortion rights. The nation’s largest abortion provider also launched a telehealth initiative in Illinois through abortion pills that are mailed to women seeking to end their pregnancies, a practice that is illegal in Missouri.
“One hundred days post-Roe we stand in defiance to say: we are not backing down,” Yamelsie Rodriguez, president and CEO of Planned Parenthood of the St. Louis Region and Southwest Missouri, said in the release.
Stacy Smith, the CEO of the pro-life group Sidewalk Advocates, said her organization was “incredibly dismayed” to see Planned Parenthood “trying to maintain its bottom line by offering mobile abortions.” The abortion provider was forced to shut down operations in states where infanticide is banned.
“This expansion takes advantage of pregnant women in crisis in states that now protect unborn children and their mothers from the tragedy of abortion,” Smith told Fox News Digital in a statement.
Conservative news site Not the Bee referred to the abortion RV as “child sacrifice on wheels.”
“Yes ladies and gentlemen, abortion is now illegal in Missouri, Kentucky, Tennessee, Arkansas, and Mississippi, so Planned Parenthood is on the move, literally driving their RV along the Illinois border looking for babies to kill,” Bee contributor Cardinal Pritchard wrote.
Child sacrifice on wheels: Planned Parenthood to set up mobile abortion clinic on Illinois border with pro-life states https://t.co/rKVi2XLaVK
— Not the Bee (@Not_the_Bee) October 4, 2022
According to Rodriguez, Planned Parenthood’s Fairview Heights clinic in Illinois near the state’s border with Missouri has experienced a 30% increase in abortion seekers since the SCOTUS ruling.
A Planned Parenthood spokesperson told Axios that clinic has seen a 340% increase in women traveling from states like Kentucky, Tennessee, and Texas for abortions
The mobile clinic is fitted with two exam rooms, a lab, and a waiting room and should be fully operational by November, according to Rodriguez, all designed with the main goal to help end the life of the most vulnerable.