Wyoming Banned Abortion. She Opened an Abortion Clinic Anyway.

The only abortion clinic left in the state has been protested and set on fire, rebuilt and opened as Wyoming grapples with what it means to be conservative in a post-Roe nation.

By Kate Zernike, NYT
March 10, 2024

It was not such an implausible idea, back in 2020, when a philanthropist emailed Julie Burkhart to ask if she would consider opening an abortion clinic in Wyoming, one of the nation’s most conservative states and the one that had twice given Donald Trump his biggest margin of victory.

In fact, Ms. Burkhart had the same idea more than a decade earlier, after an anti-abortion extremist killed her boss and mentor, George Tiller, in Wichita, Kan., where he ran one of the nation’s few clinics that provided abortion late in pregnancy.

Continued: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/10/us/wyoming-abortion-clinic-julie-burkhart.html

‘It’s Not Just the Fringe Who Are Committing These Violent Acts’

By Sarah Jones, senior writer for Intelligencer
June 11, 2023

In April, abortion provider Julie Burkhart opened her newest clinic, Wellspring Health Access, in Casper, Wyoming. Wellspring is the only clinic to provide surgical abortions in the state, and its opening had been delayed for months because an anti-abortion activist allegedly set fire to it while it was under construction. As a former employee of Dr. George Tiller, who was assassinated in 2009, Burkhart has seen the anti-abortion movement at its most violent and remains determined to provide abortion care. Though the future for abortion rights in Wyoming looks uncertain, Wellspring is taking appointments and providing a full range of reproductive-health services to people in Casper and the surrounding area. While the clinic provides care, it also fights to keep abortion legal in Wyoming. Attorneys for Wellspring have joined a group of plaintiffs challenging two recent anti-abortion laws in Wyoming: One would ban medication abortion and is set to take effect in July, and the other is a near-total abortion ban, which is on hold as litigation proceeds.

I spoke with Burkhart about her work, the future of Wellspring, and the importance of providing abortion care in rural areas and Republican-led states like Wyoming. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Continued: https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2023/06/people-of-all-walks-need-access-to-abortion-care.html

11.06.2023

Wellspring Health Access

After clinic arson, abortion rights advocates in Wyoming step up their fight

Lawmakers want to ban abortion. Advocates are confident that Wyoming’s constitution protects access — and they’re fighting in court to prove it.

Jordan Smith
October 15 2022

THE SUN WAS just coming up on May 25 when Julie Burkhart’s phone rang.

Burkhart had arrived in Casper, Wyoming, a day earlier to check on renovations to a new abortion clinic she was opening on East Second Street. The final cleaning in preparation for opening day was scheduled for the end of the week. That evening she’d done a walk-through; all looked good. But when she heard the voice of one of her contractors on the other end of the line, she knew something was wrong. “I was thinking there’s a plumbing issue,” she recalled. “‘There was a water break, right?’”

Continued: https://theintercept.com/2022/10/15/wyoming-abortion-clinic-arson/

‘Baby Killer’: Abortion Vote Is Pitting Neighbor Against Neighbor in Kansas

‘Pulled-up yard signs, nasty notes, and catcalls as Kansas becomes the first state to vote on abortion since the fall of Roe v. Wade.
By Carter Sherman
July 31, 2022

WICHITA, Kansas — On the eve of the first
state vote on abortion rights in the country since the fall of Roe v. Wade, the
lawn signs in this quiet neighborhood of nearly identical, brick-and-beige
homes hint at the strong feelings of people living inside.

“Vote No” signs suggest they will vote to preserve the Kansas state
constitution, which currently protects abortion rights. A “Value Them Both”
sign signals they’ll vote to amend the constitution, handing Republicans in the
state the power to ban abortion.

Continued: https://www.vice.com/en/article/n7zzeg/abortion-vote-kansas

We Need a Left Strategy for Confronting the Anti-Abortion Movement

The anti-abortion movement has grown increasingly militant in recent years — and increasingly successful. The liberal pushback isn’t cutting it. We need a leftist strategy to defend abortion rights.

BY ANNE RUMBERGER
July 14, 2021

Abortion access has been uneven and inadequate for decades. But with the recent announcement that the Supreme Court will hear a major abortion case next term concerning a Mississippi state law that would ban almost all abortions after fifteen weeks of pregnancy, the threat has reached new levels.

Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization strikes at the heart of the precedent set in Roe v. Wade in 1973 that abortion is permitted until fetus viability, generally at around twenty-four weeks. As it hears the case, the Supreme Court will consider one clearly delineated question: whether or not “all pre-viability prohibitions on elective abortions are unconstitutional.” Mary Ziegler, author of Abortion and the Law in America, said recently that the court taking up the case could result in overturning Roe, but it could also get rid of viability as the point at which states can ban abortion.

Continued: https://www.jacobinmag.com/2021/07/anti-abortion-movement-choice-reproductive-justice

14.07.2021

Commentary

Featured

Alliance Defending Freedom

Anne Rumberger

anti-choice intimidation

anti-choice protests

anti-choice restrictions

anti-choice terrorism

anti-choice violence

At the Well

Bevelyn Beatty

Child Evangelism Fellowship

clinic blockades

Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization

Edmee Chavannes

Father Fidelis Moscinski

Flip Benham

Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act

Marjorie Dannenfelser

Mary Wagner

Mary Ziegler

Monica Migliorino Miller

National Abortion Federation

Operation Rescue

Operation Save America

overturning Roe v. Wade

As Trump Fans the Flames of Anti-Abortion Rhetoric, Kansas Offers a Cautionary Tale

As Trump Fans the Flames of Anti-Abortion Rhetoric, Kansas Offers a Cautionary Tale

Jordan Smith
August 2 2019

A sheriff’s deputy was waiting in his car along Interstate 35 just outside Kansas City, Kansas, on the afternoon of May 31, 2009, when the powder-blue Ford Taurus rolled by.

The deputy pulled out behind the car and followed it. He took up two lanes and put on his hazards so no one would try to pass as he called for backup. Minutes later, a four-car posse pulled the Taurus over. Inside was 51-year-old Scott Roeder. He got out of the car with his hands raised. There was blood on his pants and one of his shoes.

Continued: https://theintercept.com/2019/08/02/anti-abortion-violence-kansas/

02.08.2019

Commentary

Featured

anti-choice assassinations

anti-choice terrorism

anti-choice violence

Army of God

assassination of abortion providers

attitude is everything

inflammatory rhetoric

National Abortion Federation

Rachelle "Shelley" Shannon

Randall Terry

Reformation Lutheran Church

Rev. Katherine Ragsdale

Trust Women Foundation

Trust Women Wichita clinic

USA – At least 20 abortion cases are in the pipeline to the Supreme Court. Any one could gut Roe v. Wade.

At least 20 abortion cases are in the pipeline to the Supreme Court. Any one could gut Roe v. Wade.
Today’s emotional rhetoric has parallels to another politically volatile period in the early 1990s.

By Ariana Eunjung Cha
February 15, 2019

The Supreme Court’s 5-to-4 vote this month to block a restrictive Louisiana abortion law from taking effect provided some measure of consolation to reproductive rights advocates who feared the court’s new conservative majority would act immediately to restrict access to the procedure.

But that relief is likely to be short lived. In the pipeline are at least 20 lawsuits, in various stages of judicial review, that have the potential to be decided in ways that could significantly change the rights laid out in the 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling, and refined almost two decades later in Planned Parenthood v. Casey. The 1992 decision said a state may place restrictions on abortion as long as it does not create an “undue burden” on a woman’s right to abortion.

Continued: https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2019/02/15/least-abortion-cases-are-steps-us-supreme-court-any-one-could-gut-roe-v-wade/