Kansas Abortion Practice Set to Replace Tiller Clinic

[lynn82md]

WICHITA, Kan. - For nearly four years the site has been abandoned, a low-slung, windowless, beige building just off a highway on the east side of town. But the overpowering smell of fresh paint inside hints of activity soon to come.

Supporters of Kansans for Life praying before asking the City Council to block the clinic through rezoning.

This spring, Julie Burkhart, an abortion-rights advocate who lives in Wichita, is planning to reopen the abortion clinic that occupied this space for decades, setting the stage for a re-emergence of the fiery passions that once made this conservative manufacturing town the center of the abortion battle in the United States.

Ms. Burkhart was a colleague and close friend of Dr. George R. Tiller, the clinic’s proprietor, who was fatally shot in church by an anti-abortion advocate in 2009 and whom abortion opponents viewed as enemy No. 1 in part because he performed late-term abortions. His clinic, the state’s only abortion provider outside the Kansas City area, has been shut ever since.

Abortion opponents have vowed to keep it closed. Already, they have filed complaints with the city accusing Ms. Burkhart of renovating the clinic without proper permits. They have collected around 14,000 signatures in opposition to her plan. They have asked Wichita officials to change zoning rules to prohibit the clinic from operating in its current location. They have prayed.