by Missouri State Rep. Stacey Newman – August 14, 2017
Immediately after all patients were seen Saturday afternoon, Dr. Colleen McNicholas and I jumped in a car and drove 2.5 hours to Wichita with Julie Burkhart, Trust Women Foundation CEO.
The “Brain of the Clinic”, the patient board, is finally empty after a busy Saturday.
Trust Women was founded after the 2009 assassination of Dr. George Tiller, the nationally known abortion provider for over three decades, to honor his commitment to women and continue his work.
Currently Trust Women operates three abortion clinics – in Oklahoma City, Seattle and in Dr. Tiller’s former Wichita clinic, the South Wind Women’s Center. All three clinics provide comprehensive reproductive care including medication and surgical abortions, adoption referral, early prenatal care, miscarriage management, contraceptive counseling, well-woman exams and LGBTQIA services.
Currently there are only two abortion clinics in all of Kansas, including the Planned Parenthood Comprehensive Health Center in Overland Park, a southern Kansas City suburb. 97% of Kansas counties do not have an abortion clinic and 56% of Kansas women live in those counties.
Sunday morning Trust Women Foundation hosted a reproductive health strategy session brunch with Kansas legislators, Dr. McNicholas and me, the Missouri interloper.
With Dr. McNicholas at the legislative brunch, after a bit more sleep.
State Sen. Oletha Faust-Goudeau, State Sen. Lynn Rogers, House Minority Leader Jim Ward, Rep. John Carmichael and Rep Gail Finney, all of Wichita, attended along with one other in his first term from Salina, State Sen. Randall Hardy.
The eye opener? Sen. Hardy is a Republican. A moderate. From the middle of Kansas. A legislator who believes that women don’t need government interfering in private medical decisions. In Kansas!
Sen. Hardy is not alone. My good friend, Sen. Dr. Barbara Bollier from Mission Hills is also a moderate KS Republican who champions women’s health and there were even more moderate GOP Kansans elected in 2016.
In fact, I almost fell out of my seat when Sen. Hardy laughingly agreed that he was never ever going to become pregnant so he had no business telling women what they should do!
I left the brunch with my new friends having hope for the future in our crazy legislative world of punishing women and their doctors.