'Quit the Pro-Life Bull----': Vandals Strike Mokena Home of Pro-Life Activist

The home of a Mokena woman known for her work as a pro-life activist was struck by vandals Jan. 31—but the incident hasn’t fazed her.

Jillian Stanek returned home after a family vacation to find a window shattered, a cinder block on the ground in a plastic bag. A note attached carried a simple, vehement warning: “Quit the pro-life bullshit.”

“In the scheme of things this was nothing. But having my home vandalized was a first for me in the ‪pro-life movement,” she wrote on her Facebook page. “As if they thought this would make me stop?”

Stanek’s work as a pro-life activist dates back to 1999 when she was fired from her job as a delivery-room nurse at Advocate Christ Hospital in Oak Lawn after revealing staff had performed induced-labor abortions in which prematurely delivered fetuses were left unattended to die.

Recently, she has spent six months traveling across the nation to spread the Susan B. Anthony List’s aggressive campaign strategy to elect a pro-life president this year and advance legislation, such as the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act, which would stop abortion after the fifth month of pregnancy.

The brick landed on top of Jill’s “devotional table — perhaps a reminder of how important prayer is in this battle for life.”

Stanek told Patch the attack was “a source of validation, that “what I’m doing is making a difference in the pro-life movement. If it could make somebody on the other side that mad.”

Police advised Stanek not to publicize the incident, but she wrote on her Facebook page that she “wasn’t going to let pro-choice violence go unchecked.”

She hopes the incident was an isolated one. Police have increased surveillance of the house, and the family is updating its security system.

“I think it’s an indication that the other side is becoming more desperate, as it becomes more obvious over time, that we’re winning the fight for the hearts and minds of America,” Stanek said, “and on the political and legislative fronts.”