The Long Shadow of Dr. George Tiller: Abortion Providers Under Attack

9/17/2025
by Jodi Enda, Ms. Magazine.

Julie Burkhart’s clinic was torched.

Burkhart, like Ruth Richardson, has been working in abortion facilities for years. And, like Richardson, CEO of Planned Parenthood North Central States, she is no stranger to threats or violence. In 1991, Burkhart was a young clinic worker in Wichita, Kan., when abortion opponents poured into town to participate in the so-called Summer of Mercy, a six-week protest organized by Operation Rescue (slogan: “If you believe abortion is murder, then act like it’s murder!”). They conducted blockades at the city’s three abortion clinics and threw themselves in front of cars to keep drivers from entering the clinics’ parking lots.

In 2009, Burkhart’s mentor, Dr. George Tiller, was shot in the head and killed as he was ushering at his Wichita church. The murder came 16 years after Tiller, one of the few doctors in the nation who performed abortions later in pregnancy, was shot in both arms by an extremist, and 23 years after his clinic was bombed.

Continued: https://msmagazine.com/2025/09/17/george-tiller-abortion-providers-attack/


’Heightened alert’: Abortion providers in U.S. brace for ruling

Sara Burnett, The Associated Press
Published June 21, 2022

In her first week on the job at a Philadelphia abortion clinic, Amanda Kifferly was taught how to search for bombs. About a year later, protesters blocked the entrances and exits of the The Women’s Centers, at one point pulling Kifferly into something resembling a mosh pit, where they surrounded her and shoved her around.

And on the night of last winter's arguments before the U.S. Supreme Court in a case that could end the nationwide right to abortion, people gathered outside a clinic in New Jersey with lawn chairs, a cooler and a flaming torch — a sight that brought to mind lynchings and other horrors of the country's racist past, says Kifferly, who now serves as vice-president for abortion access.

https://www.ctvnews.ca/world/heightened-alert-abortion-providers-in-u-s-brace-for-ruling-1.5957700