Lake County Gazette

The Pro-Life Action League out of Chicago is organizing a protest outside the newly opened Planned Parenthood (PP) abortion clinic in Waukegan beginning Friday at noon.  

Eric Scheidler, executive director of the Action League, said his group is coordinating the protest with Illinois Right to Life, Lake County Right to Life and other pro-life groups.

Scheidler also told the Lake County Gazette that the timing of the clinic’s opening was especially disturbing -- during Gov. J. B. Pritzker’s extended stay-at-home orders closing businesses and churches. Pritzker has permitted abortion providers to remain open during this time.

“When an infant infected with the coronavirus died the governor talked about how sad it was that years were stolen from the child,” Scheidler said. “Come on governor, what about the years stolen from a child aborted at an age just a few months younger than the child with the virus who died.”

Abortion is permissible up until the moment of birth under the Reproductive Health Act, signed by Pritzker last June.

Scheidler said he hopes for 200 protestors outside the clinic, the first for Planned Parenthood in the north suburbs. All will be practicing safe distancing guidelines, he said.

In a statement announcing the opening of the clinic, Planned Parenthood said that it expected to draw business from McHenry County, northern Cook County, the city of Chicago, and Kenosha County, Wisconsin. Wisconsin has more restrictive abortion policies that Illinois.  

Reacting to the opening, Mary Kate Knorr, executive director of Illinois Right to Life, said that Planned Parenthood has “covertly opened” the clinic as it has with other recently opened clinics in Illinois.

Two years ago, Planned Parenthood opened a clinic in Flossmoor near the Indiana border. The mayor of Flossmoor discovered only a few weeks before the opening that the group was behind the renovations at the site.

The Waukegan Planned Parenthood clinic is at 1601 N Lewis Ave.