UChicago clinic offers very late term abortions, later than even Planned Parenthood

UChicago's has been offering late-term abortions further along in pregnancy than Planned Parenthood in Illinois. 

The Ryan Center is part of UChicago's in-house Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology at the college and has been offering to perform "operating room procedures" at up to 23 weeks and six days. According to abortion finder, the college offers abortion up to 23 weeks in the pregnancy.

It is worthy of note that Planned Parenthood of Illinois only offers abortion up to 21 weeks and 6 days, one to two weeks less than the Ryan Center.

First reports on the story from the Chicago Thinker stated that the practice was illegal under law in Illinois. 

In Illinois, the current Reproductive Health Act with regards to abortion states that if a "health care professional determines that there is fetal viability, the health care professional may provide abortion care only if, in the professional judgment of the health care professional, the abortion is necessary to protect the life or health of the patient."

The law defines viability as when, "in the professional judgment of the attending health care professional, based on the particular facts of the case, there is a significant likelihood of a fetus’ sustained survival outside the uterus without the application of extraordinary medical measures."

According to research done at the University of Rochester Medical Center, published in March 2022, nearly fifty-six percent of premature infants will survive at 23 weeks during pregnancy if delivered. When a similar study was previously done in 2012, that survival rate was only 32 percent.

In another report from the Government of Western Australia that was updated in 2022, it said that babies born at 23 weeks had a survival rate of 60 percent.

The UChicago Comer Children's Hospital itself offers small baby beds in the NICU starting at 22 weeks while the same time, offering abortions nearly one to two weeks later in pregnancy.

Illinois law prohibits the "intentional homicide of an unborn child" and carries a sentence similar to first degree murder, but those committing abortions cannot receive the death penalty.

When asked for comment about the report, law student and editor Ben Ogilvie of the Thinker told the Post Millennial, "As a UChicago student, I’m flabbergasted that UChicago won’t even follow Illinois’ lax abortion laws, choosing instead to venture into child murder territory. I hope that Illinois officials will have the courage to enforce our state’s basic protections against infanticide, or at the very least openly investigate what is going on."

Kenzi Bustamante, another UChicago student, writer at the Thinker, as well as President of Students for Life at the school, said, “It is immoral to dismember a baby at any stage purely because she is unwanted, poor, or the mother is unsupported."

"It is again abhorrent to do so while simultaneously, in the same building, provide all of the life-saving, state-of-art medical treatment for an identical baby who is wanted. UChicago Medicine has the capacity to treat these babies at 22 and 23 weeks yet they opt to kill them," Bustamante continued. “UChicago medicine could treat a mother with twins by aborting one, wheeling her to the next room, and delivering the other. That is obviously morally wrong."

UChicago was reached for comment.