Boulder Abortion Provider Deplores Decision to Close Tiller’s Kansas Clinic

One of the last remaining providers of very late abortions in the country said it was an “outrage” the murder of Dr. George Tiller last week has led to his family’s decision to close the clinic he ran in Wichita, Kan.

One of the last remaining providers of very late abortions in the
country said it was an “outrage” the murder of Dr. George Tiller last
week has led to his family’s decision to close the clinic he ran in Wichita, Kan.

“How tragic, how tragic,” Boulder physician Warren Hern told The Associated Press
after Tiller’s family made the announcement Tuesday. ” “This is what
they want, they’ve been wanting this for 35 years,” Hern said,
referring to anti-abortion activists he earlier termed part of a “fascist movement.”

Asked whether he felt efforts should be made to keep the
clinic open, [Hern] said: “This was Dr. Tiller’s clinic. How much can
you resist this kind of violence? What doctor, what reasonable doctor
would work there? Where does it stop?”

Hern said he began receiving death threats when he opened his first
outpatient abortion clinic in 1973, which has prompted him to take
security measures that includes “working behind four layers of bullet
proof glass.”

“I will never be safe the rest of my life,” Hern said. “No matter
what I do. Even if I close my office. They’ve told me, don’t bother
wearing a bulletproof vest, we’re going to go for a head shot.”

Hern, who runs the Boulder Abortion Clinic, has been under increased protection from federal marshals since Tiller was shot to death at a Wichita church last Sunday. Attorney General Eric Holder ordered agents to step up security for clinics and doctors who provide abortions in the wake of Tiller’s murder.

“The anti-abortion fanatics have to shut up and go home,” Hern told
the AP. “They have to back off and they have to respect other people’s
point of view. This is an outrage, this is a national outrage.”

Attorneys for the Tiller family issued a statement Tuesday saying
the Wichita clinic, Women’s Health Care Services, which has been
shuttered since Tiller was shot to death, will remain permanently
closed.

“We are proud of the service and courage shown by our husband and
father and know that women’s health care needs have been met because of
his dedication and service,” the Tiller family said in the statement.
They said they will honor the abortion provider’s memory with private
charitable activities.

The clinic’s closure leaves the nearest abortion provider three hours away
for Wichita women, The Wichita Eagle’s Dion Lefler reports. That makes
Wichita “more typical” of medium-sized cities in the Midwest, Lefler
writes, noting that 96 percent of Kansas’ counties already lacked an
abortion provider before the Wichita clinic shut its doors.

“A three-hour trip time is not unusual for many women in America,
especially if you look at places like Mississippi and Arkansas, where
substantial populations don’t have an abortion provider,” said Jenny
O’Donnell of the Abortion Access Project.

The man accused of killing Tiller told CNN
that the clinic’s closure was “a victory for all the unborn children.”
Scott Roeder, 51, wouldn’t admit to shooting Tiller in a jailhouse
interview with CNN’s Ted Rowlands, but said if he winds up being
convicted in the slaying, “the entire motive was the defense of the
unborn.”

[Roeder] said the closure would mean “no more slicing
and dicing of the unborn child in the mother’s womb and no more needles
of poison into the baby’s heart to stop the heart from beating, and no
more partial-birth abortions.”

One of the few leaders of the anti-abortion movement who has hedged
his condemnation of Tiller’s assassination told the AP he was glad the
clinic would remain closed.

Randall Terry, who founded the original Operation Rescue
anti-abortion group, responded to the news by saying, “Good riddance.”
He said Tiller’s clinic would go down in history the way people
remember Auschwitz and other Nazi concentration camps.