Kansas Clinic Temporarily Stops Abortions After Leadership Change

A Kansas women’s health clinic that has often served as the epicenter of conflicts over abortion rights has temporarily stopped offering the procedure, exacerbating pressure on services in one of the few states in the region that still allows abortions.

The change this week at the Trust Women clinic in Wichita followed a leadership change described in an article published Thursday by the reproductive rights-focused publication Rewire News Group.

The Trust Women board acknowledged what it described as a “leadership transition” in a statement, but said it would not discuss the details for privacy reasons. The statement said it was also making changes to medical protocols.

“These decisions were not made because of anything nefarious,” Sapphire Garcia, who was elected chair of Trust Women’s board of directors last week, said in an interview with The Associated Press on Friday. “These are things that are in line with our evolution and our growth as an organization and any responsible organization offering clinical care in a time of transition like this should pause.”

She declined to discuss whether the doctors had resigned and estimated the pause in abortions would last from days to perhaps a few weeks.

Trust Women opened the Wichita clinic in 2013, in the same facility where Dr. George Tiller, a Wichita abortion provider, practiced before an anti-abortion extremist murdered him in 2009. Tiller and the Wichita clinic where he performed late-term abortions have been a goal for decades; it was bombed in 1985 and Tiller was shot in both arms in 1993.

Julie Burkhart, a former Tiller employee, said she is disturbed by what is happening at the clinic she founded before leaving to run clinics in Wyoming and Illinois. “Heartbroken, upset, tied up in knots. It’s hard to watch,” she said.

Mackenzie Haddix, deputy director of communications for Kansans for Life, said the suspension was “extremely concerning and raises many questions.”

Garcia said Trust Women was able to reschedule its abortion patients. Two other clinics in the city also offer abortions.

After Roe v. Wade was reversed, Kansas was the first state where voters weighed in on abortion at the polls, soundly rejecting a constitutional amendment that could have led to an abortion ban in August 2022. Since then, the state — which now bans abortions after 21 weeks of pregnancy – has become a destination for people from more restrictive nearby states seeking abortion.

“Kansas providers are already stretched to meet the overwhelming need, and any additional disruption will impact patients’ ability to access critical and urgent care,” said Hanna Sumpter, director of communications and marketing at Planned Parenthood Great Plains.

Trust Women, whose clinic in Oklahoma stopped offering abortions due to a state ban, typically receives between 3,000 and 4,000 calls a day – mostly from patients requesting abortion appointments – at a time when it can only serve 40 to 50 patients per day, a number a spokesperson told Kansas News Service in December.

Garcia said he doesn’t believe there has been any change in the numbers since then.

“We are grateful to move together in a direction that considers how we can expand services,” she said. “But to do this, we have to make responsible and considered decisions. And that is what this reflects, that we have acted proactively to temporarily halt abortion services.”