Will Illinois Officials Hold This Clinic Accountable to Limits After Viability?

By Sarah Neely

Chicago, IL — “Hopeless” Clinic, an Illinois abortion business that earned Operation Rescue’s title for “Worst of the Worst” in 2023 – and has continued to injure countless women since – is opening a second location in Chicago. The main focus of this new abortion mill? Gruesome second and third trimester abortions in a state with limits after viability. 

Illinois state law limits abortion after viability with exceptions. However, in 2019 the state legislature passed the Reproductive Health Act, moving the definition of “viability” from  “a reasonable likelihood of sustained survival of the fetus outside the womb, with or without artificial support” (Abortion Law of 1975) to a much more ambiguous definition: “a significant likelihood of a fetus’ sustained survival outside the uterus without the application of extraordinary medical measures.” There is no clarification within the 2019 law for what constitutes an “extraordinary” medical measure. 

In addition, the 2019 law created the broadest exceptions possible for the “health” of the mother, which is defined in the law as “all factors that are relevant to the patient’s health and well-being, including, but not limited to, physical, emotional, psychological, and familial health and age.” 

Basically, a woman can get an abortion through all nine months for just about any reason, and the abortionist is the only one required to make that determination.

“Redefining viability is not specific to Illinois,” says Troy Newman, President of Operation Rescue. “In nearly every pro-abortion ballot measure we saw last year, the abortion radicals who drafted those amendments made certain to use this vague language of ‘without extraordinary medical measures’ while also making certain to leave ‘extraordinary’ completely open to poor interpretation. What is stopping a judge from ruling that a temporary need for an oxygen cannula at birth is an ‘extraordinary’ measure? What about a feeding tube – something very common for babies arriving in the NICU? Illinois and other states haven’t just stripped away protections for viable babies in the womb, they are paving the way even for protections for premature babies, already born, to be cast aside.”

Women are also in grave danger, especially in the reckless hands of an abortion business like Hope Clinic. Since 2020, Operation Rescue has reported on nearly 40 women injured at Hope Clinic Granite City. In May, Operation Rescue filed a complaint with the Illinois Department of Public Health regarding five women injured in a matter of months. 

“Among other disastrous decisions, the 2019 law also removed the requirement for abortion clinics to be inspected and regulated,” adds Newman. “Undergoing inspections for patient safety or risking disciplinary action is now optional for the privileged class of abortion clinics, while every other ambulatory center has to follow the rules.”

Not surprisingly, only two clinics have continued to apply for licensure, including Hope Clinic. However, Operation Rescue has not seen any resolution to its recent complaint.

“To our knowledge,” Newman says, “Hope Clinic has not been disciplined in the last five years, even after injuring dozens of women. At this new late-term location, how many women will the state of Illinois allow to be injured or even killed before legislators recognize that giving abortion clinics a free pass endangers patients and ends more lives?”

Colorado has taken the same approach – exempting abortion clinics, alone, from being inspected or regulated. In February, 18-year-old Lexi Arguello died after a Colorado Planned Parenthood reportedly delayed emergency care for a complex, life-threatening complication during a second trimester abortion. Eleven other women have been injured in just the last six months, most of them at this unregulated Planned Parenthood.

In unchecked Illinois, the situation is just as dire. Sixteen women have been injured since January across eight different clinics. 

“How long before one of these women in Illinois dies on some operating table after being rushed to the ER?” asks Newman. “With an increase in late-term abortions, probably not very long. Illinois has quickly forgotten women like Tonya Reaves, who died at a Chicago Planned Parenthood in 2012 after abortion clinic staff let her hemorrhage more than five hours before calling 911. Tell us again why these clinics should be exempt from inspection, regulation, and disciplinary action?”

Hope Clinic Chicago says it aims to see 8 to 10 patients a week – eight to ten chances to add to the growing tally of injured women. 

As to the legality of a late-term abortion clinic whose Instagram account is already advertising that brutally aborting babies as old as 34 weeks “shouldn’t be on anyone else’s timeline,” Illinois officials have been predictably silent. 

Mary Kate Zander, president of Illinois Right to Life, told LifeNews, “I believe abortion providers in Illinois like Hope Clinic have become so brazen as to advertise an illegal procedure because they know the Attorney General won’t uphold the law. AG Raoul is an activist who is only interested in expanding abortion in the state – not limiting it.”

Newman adds, “The abortion lobby keeps telling voters they only want to protect ‘reproductive health,’ but as soon as it gets pro-abortion laws passed, or their ballot measures, the truth becomes obvious: these abortion radicals want one thing and one thing only – abortion through all nine months with zero regulations. Hope Clinic Chicago is proving that, and women will end up losing their lives because of it. Just like Lexi. Just like Tonya. Just like so many others who walked into a clinic that some pro-abortion state bent over backwards to protect, and then never walked back out.”

This report may be republished with inclusion of the following acknowledgement: “This article was originally published by Operation Rescue, a leading pro-life, Christian activist organization dedicated to exposing abortion abuses, demanding enforcement, saving innocent lives, and building an abortion-free America. The author, Sarah Neely, is Chief Operating Officer for Operation Rescue.”