Owner of new OKC abortion facility planning for thousands of abortions

Inside the doors, a picture hangs on the wall. The man in the photo is Dr. George Tiller, the infamous abortionist who was killed in 2009; the picture is to memorialize his abortion legacy. But outside in the neighborhood, homeowners say the legacy should go somewhere else. South Wind Women’s Center’s Oklahoma City facility opened last week without a welcome from its new neighbors.

The abortion facility owner, Julie Burkhart (pictured right), who was mentored by Tiller, allowed cameras into the new abortion facility Saturday, days after it opened to the public. Burkhart believes Oklahoma needed another abortion facility. She told a local news station:

This is really the only path to provide access to people.  Just because we live in a more traditional, conventional part of the county it doesn’t mean people don’t deserve their right.

But getting to opening day, she said, was like “pushing a boulder up a mountain.” KFOR reports that the Oklahoma State Health Department (OSDH) “denied the clinic’s license for months” before finally issuing the license for South Wind on August 31. Previously, Burkhart had planned to open in July.

News9.com reported on September 17:

With six doctors on staff, the clinic will provide a range of women’s health services, hormone therapy, OBGYN care and abortions up to 21.6 weeks. So far, Trust Women’s CEO Julie Burkhart says they’ve been welcomed by their new neighbors.

“By and large people are I think appreciative, they think our clinic is going to serve the community well,” Burkhart said.

Burkhart told KOCO News of the perceived need for an abortion facility in the Oklahoma City area by justifying the need for OB/GYNs in the region:

If you look at this part of the country, there is a lack of access to reproductive health care, and frankly a lack of access to health care across the board. It’s hard for women who want to give birth to find OB-GYNs to help them deliver their babies.

But her tragically ironic statement of needing OB/GYNs to deliver babies, when her mission is to kill them, is not lost on the neighbors in southwest Oklahoma City who, despite Burkhart’s statement of being welcomed, say otherwise. The abortion center is located at 1240 S.W. 44th St, and the neighbors would like their addresses to be in an abortion-free area.

Carly Ketcham, who lives virtually across the street from the facility, told News 9 last week that the neighborhood, already in decline through the years, is likely to decline more when potential buyers get wind that South Wind is there:

Ketcham thinks having an abortion clinic so close will make the homes tougher to sell and probably hurt their value.

“They’re just going to want the value they can get for it, and get out of here,” Ketcham said about her family’s plan.

“It’s the economy factor and my religious beliefs,” said Ketcham about why she wishes the South Wind Women’s Center weren’t so close.

The OSDH report of abortions in the state reports that Oklahoma is actually seeing its abortion rate steadily decline:

From 2002 to 2015, there have been 79,038 induced abortions… On average there were 5,646 abortions per year…. The fewest number (4,330) of abortions was recorded in 2015. For the reporting period, the relative decrease in the number of abortions was 30.3 percent. Oklahoma experienced a decline (34.0 percent) in the abortion ratio between 2002 and 2015 Over this period the abortion ratio dropped from 123.5 abortions per 1,000 live births in 2002 to 81.5 abortions per 1,000 live births in 2015.

Despite that continued decline, and a pro-life state which has passed virtually every pro-life law that has been proposed, Burkhart thinks her facility will perform 1500 abortions in her first year, which she expects to double to 3000 in the next few years.

Since the market for Oklahoma abortions is declining in number, it would appear that Burkhart wants to raise the number of dead babies.