By CatholicVote | Created at 2025-03-26 21:53:47 | Updated at 2025-04-05 01:50:27
1 week ago
CV NEWS FEED // Approximately 2,000 pro-life advocates gathered at the Illinois state Capitol in Springfield March 25, voicing strong opposition to recent legislative proposals that violate the dignity of human life.
The event featured remarks from notable speakers, including former state representative and gubernatorial candidate Jeanne Ives, Bishop Thomas John Paprocki of the Diocese of Springfield, and Rep. Adam Niemerg of Dieterich, The State Journal-Register reported.
The demonstration coincided with growing concern among pro-life leaders over a suite of bills currently under consideration in the Illinois General Assembly.
Mary Kate Zander, president of Illinois Right to Life, was among the leaders drawing attention to a series of bills moving through the General Assembly. These include efforts to legalize physician-assisted suicide, introduce abortion services into student health care at public universities, and redefine pro-life speech in the workplace as harassment.
“The Illinois Pro-Life March is speaking out against increased state support and taxpayer funding for the termination of babies in the womb,” Zander said in a March 25 emailed press release.
“These targeted bills pose a major threat to the state’s most vulnerable members, which includes more than the preborn, but also the aged, infirm, and defenseless women and children, who are all susceptible to exploitation,” she later added.
The event comes shortly after the Diocese of Springfield and a Rockford-based pregnancy support organization filed a federal lawsuit challenging the Illinois Human Rights Act, according to the State Journal-Register. The suit contends that the law forces religious employers to hire individuals whose beliefs on reproductive issues — such as abortion — conflict with their mission, thereby infringing on their religious liberty.
“I want to pray in a special way today for members of the Democratic Party that are promoting abortion,” Bishop Paprocki told the crowd at the event, Muddy River News reported. “Gov. [JB] Pritzker and the Democrats keep pushing abortion legislation. I pray that God will touch their hearts and will change their hearts.”
The march occurred amid heightened scrutiny of abortion practices in Illinois, following recent revelations about a disturbing case at a state-funded abortion clinic.
CatholicVote reported on a lawsuit alleging that Dr. Keith Reisinger-Kindle of the Equity Clinic in Champaign botched an abortion, leaving more than half of the unborn child inside the mother’s body and causing a perforated uterus that required emergency surgery.
In the emailed press release, Ives criticized Gov. JB Pritzker for creating conditions that allowed such incidents to happen. She said Reisinger-Kindle moved to Illinois “because he saw a market opportunity with lax laws, a university nearby and taxpayer support for abortion and his clinic.”
Ives also noted that in 2023, Pritzker awarded Reisinger-Kindle’s business a $101,915 taxpayer-funded “security grant.”
