Last week, Operation Rescue’s Chief Operating Officer, Sarah Neely, spoke at the Illinois Pro-Life March where nearly 3,000 Illinois citizens gathered to stand for life and call on more protections for children in the womb and the mothers who carry them.
The theme of the 2026 March was “Abortion Hurts Women,” which Operation Rescue knows all too well. Neely was asked to speak because of the numerous emergencies Operation Rescue has reported on within the state of Illinois, especially in recent years.
“Last year, Operation Rescue conducted 56 investigations across 15 states,” Neely told pro-life citizens at the event. “Twenty-two of those investigations were in the state of Illinois — which refuses to investigate and inspect abortion clinics. State officials in Illinois have decided abortion businesses get a free pass to operate as they please with no oversight.”
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Just three weeks previous to the March, Operation Rescue reached out to the Illinois Department of Public Health to follow up on a complaint OR submitted against Planned Parenthood Near North. In November 2025, staff at this facility callously threw a woman into the street right after destroying her baby.
The Illinois Department of Public Health replied that it does not license Planned Parenthood facilities and, by the Department’s own admission, leaves abortion clinics without any oversight.
Troy Newman, President of Operation Rescue, says, “We call states like Illinois an ‘abortion devastation’ — a place where state officials have abandoned women to enter these dumps at their own risk, and offer no recourse when those women suffer life-threatening injuries and complications. Twenty-two women left an Illinois abortion clinic in an ambulance last year, nearly all of them hemorrhaging, and the state of Illinois didn’t investigate a single incident. Not one.”
Colorado is another “abortion devastation” where officials also refuse to inspect or investigate clinics — even when a young girl dies.
In February 2025, 18-year-old Lexi Arguello died after Planned Parenthood Fort Collins delayed emergency care in the midst of a catastrophic complication experienced during a second trimester abortion. State officials have not investigated this clinic or its staff — not even to confirm whether or not proper emergency protocols were in place or properly followed the day Lexi died.
In fact, out of the 14 emergencies Operation Rescue investigated in Colorado last year, 8 of them took place at this Fort Collins location, including Lexi’s death. And, in 2026, OR’s investigative team has already looked into four more emergencies at this same location while state officials ask no questions, choosing, instead, to look the other way.
“We submitted a complaint asking the state to at least investigate Lexi’s tragic death,” says Neely. “To examine the evidence that indicates Planned Parenthood failed to call 911 in time to save her life. The Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment wrote back and said it has no regulatory authority because it does not license the facility. In other words: Lexi’s death is not our problem.”
Combined, these two “abortion devastations” — Colorado and Illinois — made up 67% of the investigations Operation Rescue carried out last year. And both have already required new investigations this year.
“How many bodies in how many emergency rooms or morgues do states like this need to see pile up before they are willing to admit unregulated abortion clinics are harming and killing women?” asks Newman. “No other ambulatory center in Illinois or Colorado receive the same free pass and privilege that these untouchable abortion clinics seem to enjoy. Citizens must reach out to their legislators on this issue. They must vote pro-life at the local and state level. We must call on every state official to stop allowing special privileges for clinics that are harming women.”
Earlier this week, Operation Rescue also reported on the death of Kermit Gosnell, the infamous late-term abortionist who conducted countless illegal late-term abortions in his filthy Philadelphia clinic. For untold years, Gosnell also “snipped” the spinal cord of babies born alive, even keeping their feet as trophies in his clinic and home. He was finally arrested, convicted, and given three life sentences for several charges, including first-degree murder — but his long career of killing was made possible by Pennsylvania officials who decided to look the other way and give a free pass to abortion clinics.
Numerous people, including patients and other doctors, reported concerns about Gosnell’s abominable practice — one doctor even hand delivered his complaint to the Health Department — yet not one inspection or investigation was initiated.
“Illinois and Colorado have already laid the groundwork for another Gosnell,” says Newman. “A woman died in Colorado — her young life cut short — and state officials didn’t raise a finger. Women are being carted out of Illinois clinics with perforated uteruses and severe hemorrhages, one after another, and state officials are not raising a finger. They are looking the other way, and every abortionist knows it — just like Gosnell knew it.”
LifeNews Note: 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.
