Life Links 1/4/10

New data from the Illinois Public Health Department shows that abortions in Illinois have reached a ten-year high.

In 2008, the most recent year for which data are available, figures from the Illinois Public Health Department show that 47,717 abortions were performed statewide.

That represents a 5 percent increase from 2007. And it's the most abortions in Illinois in a year since 1998, when 49,403 women were reported to have had abortions.

Prolifers are pointing to the new Planned Parenthood facility in Aurora as a possible explanation.

Abortion statistics in three of the four counties straddling Aurora saw the number of women seeking the procedure jump dramatically in 2008, state records show.

There was a 73 percent jump in abortions for women in Kendall County, the home of 194 women who had an abortion in 2008. A year earlier, 112 women in Kendall County had an abortion.

In Kane County, the number of women who obtained abortions in 2008 rose 38 percent, increasing to 1,145 from 832 in 2007.

And in Will County, the number of women who obtained abortions grew by 22 percent. In 2008, 1,161 Will County women got abortions, compared with 953 in 2007.

At the web site of the Catholic Family & Human Rights Institute, Samantha Singson summarizes International Planned Parenthood’s latest annual report.

IPPF’s overall income for 2008 was US$119.7 million, down from over $120 million the previous year. While IPPF's total financial intake dipped, its abortion business boomed. The organization provided almost 428,000 “abortion services” to young people alone, with a staggering 1,134,549 total number of such services – almost double the number from 2007 – across the globe.

Why is Massachusetts Citizens for Life supporting Scott Brown, a U.S. Senate candidate who supports Roe v. Wade? I know that true prolife candidates are hard to find in Massachusetts and Martha Coakley wants to replace Barbara Boxer as Senator Abortion but prolife organizations need to have some line in the sand.


The abortion rate in Israel has fallen 10% since 2000.

Israel requires all women seeking abortions to get approval from hospital abortion panels, which approved 98 percent of all requests in 2008, consistent with the approval rate seen in previous years. Last year, 19,594 abortions were carried out in Israel....

The reason given for more than half (54 percent) of the abortions approved in Israel in 2008 was attributed to pregnancy out of wedlock, adultery or incest. About one-fifth of abortions were approved due to concern for the physical or mental health of the mother; one-fifth due to possible harm to the fetus; and one-tenth due to the age of the mother (either younger than 17 or older than 40).