Abortion Clinics Continue to Close amid Lawsuits, Protests

In what has become a regular occurrence, another abortion clinic has closed its doors after years of protests and legal action by pro-life activists.

Operation Rescue is reporting that Central Family Medical in Kansas City, Kansas, announced on its website in late July that it had closed. The facility says it is because the abortionist, Ronald Yeomans, and the clinic administrator were retiring.

Cheryl Sullenger of Operation Rescue said pro-lifers discovered when they arrived on Saturday, July 26th for their usual morning of trying to talk women out of abortion that the place was unusually quiet. Saturdays are usually quite busy for abortion clinics. Sullenger said they checked the facility’s website and discovered the permanent closing.

Sullenger believes the clinic closed because of legal action taken by her group. Two years ago Operation Rescue filed a complaint with the Kansas State Board of Healing Arts charging that Aid for Women, the working name of the clinic, had been “pre-checking” boxes indicating there was no suspicion of abuse. Sullenger says, “This indicated that Aid for Women engaged in the illegal practice of never reporting abuse.”

Operation Rescue, which became famous for its massive campaigns to block clinic entrances, has changed tactics in recent years, now focusing on legal action against clinics, pressing for tighter state control of the clinics, and documenting abuse and harm at the hands of abortion doctors.

In this case, Operation Rescue received “documents and medical refuse” supplied by an inside source. Operation Rescue alleges the documents showed several minors had their babies aborted and that the boxes regarding abuse had been pre-checked.

Operation Rescue complains that the clinic should have been shuttered three years ago because of a state law that would have placed the clinics under the Kansas Department of Health and Environment and would have subjected them to inspections and mandated them to meet tougher safety guidelines. A lawsuit brought by another Kansas abortionist has so far blocked the law from going into effect.

A similar law passed last summer in Texas has resulted in over half of Texas’s 41 abortion clinics closing. Texas abortions have declined by 13% since that time. It is anticipated that Texas will have only six abortion clinics when the remainder of that state’s law goes into effect September 1.