Abortion services return to Wichita; pro-lifers already defaming new providers
It’s been more than a year since Wichita abortion provider Dr. George Tiller was gunned down while ushering at a church, and though there was talk of reopening his clinic, nothing ever came of it. Sitting in his Kansas prison cell, Tiller’s assassin, Scott Roeder, might’ve thought he put so much fear into doctors that no one would ever offer abortion services in Wichita again.
That’s not the case. Despite the city’s most well-known abortion provider spending years getting shot at, threatened, and dragged to court by corrupt politicians looking to make political points, two new doctors have stepped up to make sure that Wichita’s women have access to all the medical services they’re entitled to under the law.
Aid For Women announced that doctors Mila Means and Greg Linhardt have been training to perform abortion procedures at a Kansas City, Kansas, clinic, and will start practicing in Wichita next year. Most of the controversy surrounding Tiller was over his practice offering late-term abortions, but a spokesman for Means says those won’t be offered at her clinic. Linhardt hasn’t made a public statement yet.
Pro-Life groups, incensed that anyone would have the guts to replace Tiller, have already started smearing the doctors personal and professional lives in e-mails to the faithful followers of Kansans For Life. One message warns that both doctors are “turning to abortion profiteering as they face professional and personal failures.” The message slams Means for having an inconsequential hearing with the state Healing Arts Board in 2007 over treating her own relatives, and which resulted in nothing worse than a board request that she take a class on respecting patients boundaries.
As for Linhardt, KFL had to get even sleazier, questioning his professional integrity because his wife is suing him for divorce and he allegedly violated a restraining order — as if marital discord has any bearing on your competence as a doctor. For more on the pro-life reaction to Tiller’s murder, check out my July feature, “A Day in the Right to Life.”
