The new abortion facility in Oklahoma City has upset people all over the mid-western city.
Neighbors near the abortion business, Trust Women South Wind Women’s Center, are the latest to complain. They believe the business, which opened last week, could lower their property values and make it more difficult to sell their homes in the future, News 9 Oklahoma reports.
South Wind is the first abortion facility to open in the city in 40 years, KFOR 4 News reports. It is the project of Julie Burkhart, a businesswoman who has a shady reputation, having once run an abortion clinic for late-term abortionist George Tiller. She also owns and runs an abortion business in Wichita, Kansas.
Two years ago, Oklahoma City’s last abortion facility closed, making it “the largest metro in America to have zero abortion facilities,” the local news channel noted. Last week, that changed when South Wind opened.
Local pro-lifers have been protesting peacefully outside the building for months, but neighbors also are upset about the abortion business being so close to them. Carly Ketcham, who grew up in the area, said the neighborhood is declining, and her family plans to sell their house soon and move.
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Ketcham told News 9 that the abortion clinic could hurt their property value and make it more difficult to find a buyer. She said she is opposed to the new abortion business both because of “the economy factor and my religious beliefs.”
Another neighbor, Eddy Crim, said he also is worried about how the abortion facility will affect his neighborhood.
“I have no idea what it’s going to do,” Crim told the news station. “It’s not my field of interest, but it is now.”
There are not many details about the new abortion facility. However, Burkhart hinted that they will do late-term abortions. She previously told Bloomberg that they will do abortions on babies up to 24 weeks (like the baby in the image above), LifeNews reported.
“After the physician in Oklahoma City went out of business, I felt like it was even more important,”she added in an interview with Rolling Stone. “If you want abortion care in Oklahoma, currently you have to go to Tulsa or Norman. Our clinic will go further in terms of gestational limit, and it will be one more site for people to go to.”
Burkhart estimated that they will see about 1,500 women at the new facility in the first year and twice as many in the second year.
Local pro-lifers, including pregnancy centers, are preparing to increase their outreach in response to Burkhart’s new abortion business. Church-goers already have held several peaceful protests outside the facility.
Burkhart and her Kansas abortion facility have poor reputations for patient care and safety. Cheryl Sullenger, a leader of Operation Rescue, described Burkhart this way:
Burkhart is a militant pro-abortion activist who once worked for the notorious late-term abortionist George Tiller as head of his now-defunct political action committee. During that time, Burkhart was paid by Tiller to lobby against common sense laws that provided late-term abortion limits, as well as safety standards and accountability for abortion clinics. She also opposed efforts by [Kansas] Attorney General Phil Kline to investigate the non-reporting of child sex abuse at Kansas abortion clinics.
In December, pro-lifers uncovered even more evidence of shady goings on.
A 911 call from November revealed a desperate mother saying that her teenage daughter was being forced to have an abortion at Burkhart’s Wichita facility, LifeNews reported. According to police, the mother called 911 after receiving text messages from the teen saying that her estranged father was holding her at the abortion facility against her will. Police arrived at the scene but Burkhart did not cooperate well with the police, according to reports. She refused to say whether the teen was inside her facility or speak to police while being recorded, according to the report. Her obstruction prevented the police from checking on the teen’s welfare.
In July 2015, pro-lifers also uncovered evidence that a woman had been severely injured in a botched abortion at her Wichita facility. According to 911 audio from the incident, Burkhart initially told an ambulance crew not to rush there or turn its lights on for the woman, LifeNews reported.
