SPRINGFIELD, Illinois (LifeSiteNews) – Illinois Democrat Gov. J.B. Pritzker says he is “proud” of those who kill preborn babies for a living in a video released over the weekend to celebrate “Abortion Provider Appreciation Day.”
The video, released through Pritzker’s far-left activist organization Think Big America, offers a “thank you” to “doctors, nurses, clinic staff and volunteers” involved in abortions for their “compassion.”
Think Big America is dedicated to promoting abortion nationwide and euphemistically derides pro-lifers as “right wing extremists.”
“You’re on the front lines of this fight, and your sacrifices and your work make me proud,” Pritzker said about those who destroy innocent unborn children.
Pritzker highlighted his efforts to shield abortionists from “legal attacks,” including eliminating parental notification and attempting to drive pro-life pregnancy centers out of business.
He added that the so-called “fight for reproductive freedom goes beyond Illinois.”
“With Think Big America, we’re going state by state and across the nation to protect a woman’s right [sic] to an abortion,” he said.
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In fact, Pritzker is celebrating as “compassionate” an industry that exists to help people lethally dispose of their own children, the vast majority of the time for career, financial, or lifestyle interests. Moreover, experts attest that abortion is never medically necessary. Long-settled biological criteria and mainstream medical textbooks establish that a living human being, structurally and genetically distinct from his or her mother, is created upon fertilization and is present throughout the entirety of pregnancy – regardless of whether that embryonic human is being artificially sustained outside of the womb.
This is not in serious dispute; in 2019, University of Chicago Department of Comparative Human Development graduate Steve Jacobs found that 96% of more than 5,500 biologists he surveyed agreed, despite overwhelmingly identifying as “liberal,” “pro-choice,” and Democrats, and a majority identifying as “non-religious.” Many abortionists and pro-abortion activists and philosophers admit as much, granting preborn babies’ humanity while either asserting that a mother’s “bodily autonomy” trumps her baby’s rights or making the loaded claim that some humans do not necessarily count as “persons.”
Further, the abortion industry hailed by the governor is notorious for neglecting basic health and safety standards at locations across the country, and abortions often carry a severe toll for the women who seek them out.
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According to the American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists (AAPLOG), which represents 7,000 medical professionals who reject the left-wing orthodoxy of the medical establishment, “[w]omen face a 35% increased risk of preterm birth in a future pregnancy after one surgical abortion and an almost 90% increase in preterm birth risk after two abortions. The increased risk of future preterm birth for women after they have an abortion represents a clear long-term health risk. Mothers who deliver preterm babies are at a higher risk of medical complications later in life, including cardiovascular disease and stroke.”
“From 1993 to 2018, there are at least 75 studies examining the link between abortion and mental health,” the group continues. “Two-thirds of those studies showed a correlation between abortion and adverse mental health outcomes. Studies show abortion significantly increases the risk of depression, anxiety, substance abuse, and suicidal behavior, when compared to women with unintended pregnancies who choose to carry the baby to birth. A study from Finland found a 7X higher suicide rate after abortion compared to when women gave birth.”
Currently, the abortion lobby and its allies are advocating for more lax standards for dispensing abortion pills, such as removing requirements that they be administered with a doctor present for potential complications, despite the potential for even more harm to women.
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A 2020 open letter from a coalition of pro-life groups to then-U.S. Food & Drug Administration (FDA) Commissioner Stephen Hahn noted that the FDA’s own adverse reporting system says the “abortion pill has resulted in over 4,000 reported adverse events since 2000, including 24 maternal deaths. Adverse events are notoriously underreported to the FDA, and as of 2016, the FDA only requires abortion pill manufacturers to report maternal deaths.”
“A November 2021 study by Charlotte Lozier Institute scholars appeared in the peer-reviewed journal Health Services Research and Managerial Epidemiology,” writes Catholic University of America research associate Michael New. “They analyzed state Medicaid data of over 400,000 abortions from 17 states that fund elective abortions through their Medicaid programs. They found that the rate of abortion-pill-related emergency-room visits increased over 500 percent from 2002 through 2015. The rate of emergency-room visits for surgical abortions also increased during the same time period, but by a much smaller margin.’”
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