September 26, 2012

Abortion Rights Group Buys Dr. Tiller’s Clinic

<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/sylvia_mcfadden/7298841994/sizes/m/in/photostream/">Sydigill</a>/Flickr

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The Wichita clinic where Dr. George Tiller provided abortions may soon be back. The Wichita Eagle reports that the Trust Women Foundation has purchased the building that housed Women’s Health Care Services and intends to begin providing services there once again.

The clinic has been closed since an anti-abortion extremist murdered Tilller while the doctor served as an usher in his church in May 2009. The Trust Women Foundation and Political Action Committee is led by Julie Burkhart, a former spokesperson for the clinic and longtime pro-choice activist in Kansas. The Eagle reports that the foundation filed paperwork with the Secretary of State on Tuesday to purchase the clinic from Dr. Tiller’s widow.

This is big news for supporters of abortion rights in Wichita, which has had no abortion clinics since Tiller’s murder.  Anti-abortion activists within the Kansas legislature have been doing their best to make it really difficult to provide abortions in the state. Last year, legislators passed strict new building codes that threatened to close down all the clinics in the state. A judge blocked the law from taking effect, but the legal wrangling over it continues. Tiller’s clinic would likely have to make significant changes if the courts let that law go forward.

Meanwhile, the Kansas medical board has continued to relentlessly pursue Tiller’s former colleague, Kristin Neuhaus, taking away her license in June for her work at the clinic. Another doctor training to provide abortions in the city has been blocked by her landlord and had her life threatened by anti-abortion activists.

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“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

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And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

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