Another Planned Parenthood has closed its doors, this time in Illinois.
The abortion chain’s Effingham facility closed on Aug. 30 and posted a note on its door directing patients to the Planned Parenthood in Champaign, Illinois, the Effingham Daily News reports.
A spokesperson for the Illinois abortion affiliate said they decided to consolidate the two centers because business “continued to drop” in Effingham.
Local pro-lifers said the news was a good sign. Rob McKerrow, one of a small group of pro-lifers who stood outside the facility every week to offer women life-affirming information and support, said they noticed how Planned Parenthood kept reducing its business hours.
“I guess we finally wore them down,” McKerrow told the newspaper. “Yesterday, we learned they were packing up at closing time.”
“All they’re doing is advising about abortion and passing out pills,” he continued. “The whole idea is that you can get rid of a child, and that’s murder.”
The Effingham facility did not abort unborn babies, but it did refer patients to facilities that did. The Champaign center does abortions on-site, according to Planned Parenthood’s website.
A Bloomberg analysis earlier this year found that abortion facilities are closing at a record pace across the U.S.
Since 2011, at least 162 abortion clinics have shut or stopped doing abortions; 21 new abortion clinics opened in that same time period, the analysis found. The top four states that saw abortion clinics close were Texas with 30-plus, Iowa with 14, Michigan with 13 and California with 12, according to the report. A report from Operation Rescue also found that 53 abortion clinics closed in 2015 alone.
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The analysis found that a number of abortion clinics closed because their abortionists were deemed “unfit to practice,” while others closed because they could not find a doctor willing to do abortions. Michigan specifically had two abortionists who were labeled “unfit to practice,” according to the report.
In March, LifeNews reported about an Indiana abortion facility that closed after its abortionist was criminally charged with failing to report suspected child sex abuse. He recently was found guilty and stripped of his medical license.
Lack of business also has been a major factor in the closing of abortion clinics. In February, a Planned Parenthood abortion clinic in Blacksburg, Virginia announced that it was closing for this very reason, LifeNews reported. A Bridgeport, Connecticut abortion clinic also told Bloomberg it closed in 2015 because of reduced demand.
These numbers, coupled with plunging national abortion statistics, point to the fact that fewer women actually want abortions. As modern technology shows clear pictures of unborn babies in the womb, and as more pro-life groups offer women alternatives to abortion, more women have access to the education and resources to choose life for their unborn babies.
