By Dave Andrusko

You have to hand it to Planned Parenthood. Few are as adroit as creating shell companies and employing misdirection so that no Fairview Heights, Illinois city official knew that the nation’s leading abortion provider was secretly converting an existing but vacant medical office into a gigantic 18,000 sq. foot clinic where it would perform both surgical and chemical (“medication”) abortions.

The ribbon-cutting and rally is scheduled for later today, with the killing geared to begin Wednesday.

“Fairview Heights Mayor Mark Kupsky said the city administration had not been informed of Monday’s ribbon cutting event,” according to Joseph Bustos of the Belleville News-Democrat. “ He said he also would be out of town on business on Monday.”

Kupsky has said the city was not aware Planned Parenthood was building its new clinic and the city offices had received many calls and emails from people expressing concern about the facility. “This is a very political issue,” Kupsky said. “I don’t know if someone from the city will attend or not.”

The Associated Press story that ran this morning cut to the chase in the opening sentence: “FAIRVIEW HEIGHTS, Ill. (AP) — A clinic quietly constructed in southern Illinois to meet demand for abortion services by residents outside the state is close to opening.”

As we reported October 2, Planned Parenthood kept the building under wraps, unveiling its secret to the highly sympathetic CBS News reporter Kate Smith.

Smith’s fawning profile of Colleen McNicholas, the chief medical officer of Planned Parenthood of the St. Louis Region and Southwest Missouri, a kind of reverse Florence Nightingale, began

After over a year of secret construction, Planned Parenthood announced its newest abortion facility on Wednesday: an 18,000-square-foot mega-clinic in southern Illinois. The new location is just 13 miles away from Missouri’s last remaining abortion clinic, a facility in St. Louis fighting to keep its license. Since August 2018, Planned Parenthood has used a shell company to construct the facility, leaving no public trace that the former medical office would become one of the largest abortion clinics in the country. CBS News first visited the site in August, while it was still being built. [Underlining mine.]

We’re told that while this gigantic abortion clinic hopes to take up the slack for the closures of Missouri abortion clinics, it “doesn’t mean they’re giving up on Missouri.”

“Our supporters, our patients, the board, everyone is so committed to the mission of being present in Missouri and taking the responsibility to provide access to abortion for Missourians in the place they live,” McNicholas said. “Although I am confident it will be a fight, we will continue to show up to that fight.”

Guess what? Pro-lifers aren’t giving up, either.