{"id":244691,"date":"2021-05-06T09:47:54","date_gmt":"2021-05-06T14:47:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.liveaction.org\/news\/?p=244691"},"modified":"2021-06-02T14:39:53","modified_gmt":"2021-06-02T19:39:53","slug":"illinois-pregnancy-center-250k-damage-arson","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.liveaction.org\/news\/illinois-pregnancy-center-250k-damage-arson\/","title":{"rendered":"Illinois pregnancy center set ablaze by arsonist, but knows ‘good will come’"},"content":{"rendered":"
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In the early morning hours of May 3, the Women’s Care Center<\/a> of Peoria, Illinois, part of a national chain<\/a> of pregnancy care centers based out of South Bend, Indiana, was targeted by an arsonist who set fire to the locked building.<\/p>\n

The center is located directly next door to what served for years as Peoria’s only surgical abortion facility until its closure in 2019. The Women’s Care Center provides free pregnancy testing and ultrasounds to\u00a0over 500 women in the local community each year, with 13 women served per day, 1,000 ultrasounds performed annually, and 596 babies saved in the last year, according to the center’s\u00a0website<\/a>.<\/p>\n

According to a local news channel<\/a>, the local fire department responded to the fire around 2:40 am on Monday. “When crews arrived on scene, they found heavy fire coming from the windows in front of the building.\u00a0Crews then advanced their lines and extinguished the blaze. The scene was under control by 3 a.m.” While the fire was contained largely to one main room, heat and smoke damage throughout the building rendered the property a total loss, estimated at $250,000.<\/p>\n

READ:\u00a0The irony behind the newest pro-abortion hashtag about pregnancy centers<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

The Catholic Post<\/a>, the newspaper of the Catholic Diocese of Peoria, spoke to Christine Dennis, the center’s founder, as well as current director of client care Connie McClure. McClure commented, “Our doors are open. We just don\u2019t have any doors.”<\/p>\n