NYT editiorial: Courage in Kansas
Nearly four years after an anti-abortion extremist opened fire and killed a Wichita abortion provider, Dr. George Tiller, as he stood in the foyer of his church, a new medical clinic offering comprehensive reproductive health services — including abortions through the first trimester of pregnancy — opened on April 3. It is in the building that once housed Dr. Tiller’s clinic.
Wichita, a city of about 400,000 people, has been without any abortion services since Dr. Tiller’s murder. Women needing abortions have had to travel long distances, stealing time away from jobs and family, to exercise their constitutionally protected right to one of the nation’s most common medical procedures.
The new clinic, called the South Wind Women’s Center, will not be performing late-term abortions as Dr. Tiller did. But the fact that it has opened at all is remarkable, and is a tribute to the perseverance and courage of those involved in the project, especially Julie Burkhart, a former colleague of Dr. Tiller who directs the Trust Women Foundation, which owns the clinic. Her struggle to open the facility after the murder, and now to keep it open in the face of continuing threats and acts of intimidation, and amid escalating efforts in Kansas and other Republican-led states to stigmatize and restrict abortion in defiance of Roe v. Wade and subsequent Supreme Court rulings, is both inspiring and instructive.
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Anti-abortion groups responded by trying, unsuccessfully, to get the local planning commission to rezone the site to keep out medical services, and by filing bogus complaints with building inspectors and fire marshals in an effort to shut down renovations. The harassers even filed a complaint with the Kansas State Board of Healing Arts, the state body that regulates medical providers, alleging the illegal practice of medicine when the clinic was not even open.
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http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/14/opinion/sunday/courage-on-abortion-in-wichita-kansas.html
The rest of this excellent editorial is at the link. It's well worth the .
