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Melissa Harris-Perry: We're back with The Takeaway. I'm Melissa Harris-Perry. There's little doubt that the better-than-expected performance of Democrats in the 2022 midterms is a direct result of voters' efforts to protect abortion access in America, and it's a fight that is far from resolved.

When the Supreme Court decided Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health this summer, 13 states had trigger bans set to go into effect. These laws were designed to severely limit or end access to abortion in a state if Roe v. Wade were overturned at the federal level.

One of those states was Wyoming. Now, Wyoming's law made performing an abortion a felony punishable by up to 14 years in prison, but in July, a district judge granted a temporary injunction against the ban. The decision offered a moment of reprieve to Wellspring Health Access Clinic. In May, Wellspring was preparing to open the state's only procedural abortion clinic when on May 25th, the clinic was targeted by arson.

Wellspring Health Access has been closed since the fire but is once again set to open in the coming months under the leadership of Julie Burkhart.

Julie Burkhart: I'm the founder and president of Wellspring Health Access.

Melissa Harris-Perry: I spoke with Julie about the landscape for abortion providers in Wyoming. Tell me about the work you were doing in Wyoming before the arson.

Julie Burkhart: We had done a lot of construction work on the building. We were six days, seven days away from bringing staff into the clinic to start training before we opened for clinical services on June 14th, and so we had put months into renovations, hiring staff members, lining up our physicians who were coming to work at the clinic, and then, unfortunately, on May 25th, in the wee hours of the morning, there was an arsonist who broke into the clinic and set it on fire. That was quite devastating for us in that time.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Is abortion legal in the state of Wyoming?

Julie Burkhart: Yes. Abortion is legal in the state of Wyoming at this time. We, along with five other plaintiffs, sued the state of Wyoming when they moved to enact the ban this past July, and the judge has issued an injunction in the case, so we are able to operate under the statutes of Wyoming at this time. We anticipate that there will be a trial date sometime in 2023, but she has yet to set that date for us.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Now that we are on the other side of the 2022 midterms, I'm wondering if you are perspective about that ongoing fight simply to keep abortion legal if your perspective has changed at all on what might be possible in Wyoming.

Julie Burkhart: I feel that the outcome that we've seen in these midterm elections overall solidifies my feelings about working in these more conservative-leaning, Republican-leaning states to bring abortion care, reproductive healthcare to people in these states.

We saw a real opportunity when I was asked to come into Wyoming a couple of years ago now. We saw a real opportunity to bring services to people who right now only have access to medication abortion.

We will be the only procedural abortion clinic in the state, but looking at the state statutes, looking at the state constitution, we felt that Wyoming was worth the risk. Wyoming, like any other state in the nation, is worth defending when it comes to abortion rights because if people aren't freely, in all of our states across this nation, able to exercise their rights, that says something about our democracy and our democratic values, so the midterms really solidified my feeling in that we are in the right path.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Why not simply say, well, we're a patchwork, and folks can travel if they need to?

Julie Burkhart: In the United States, where we are supposed to be the United States, and in my mind, that means we afford rights to people in all of our states that it is burdensome. It's a hardship to say to somebody from Texas, Mississippi, Louisiana, any of these other states that have gone about banning abortion rights that, well, you're just going to have to get in your car and drive, or you're going to have to hop on an airplane and fly.

The fact of the matter is, depending on what state you're coming from, 60% to 70% of women already have children. People have children at home to tend to who they care about. They have jobs. Some people do not have the finances to just hop in a car or an airplane and travel states away in order to get healthcare services. In my mind, that's creating a different class of citizen here in the United States, which I think is incredibly shameful that we would allow anyone in this country to be put in that position.

Melissa Harris-Perry: We were just talking, you were just talking about what it means to say to folks you shouldn't have to fly or get in a car and drive for many hours and cross state lines but in Wyoming as a sole or one of the very few providers, I wonder if that's still the reality.

Julie Burkhart: People are still going to have to drive. We are also anticipating putting telemedicine services into place for patients as well, even though the clinic has not opened yet, and we will be opening first with a mobile healthcare unit in advance of our bricks-and-mortar facility being remodeled again, but we have been fielding calls from people in South Dakota, people who can no longer access abortion care freely in their state and it's unfortunate that in these and especially in the West where we have this vast, wide open space, people will still have to drive. We're hoping to alleviate some of that burden so that they don't have to necessarily go to Colorado or Utah and that we will be there as a resource for people.

Melissa Harris-Perry: All right, let's take a quick break but don't go away. Up next, Julie Burkhart talks about her friend and mentor, the late Dr. George Tiller.

Still with me is Julie Burkhart, founder and president of Wellspring Health Access, the only abortion provider in the state of Wyoming. Early in her career, Julie worked with the late Dr. George Tiller, an abortion provider from Wichita, Kansas, who was assassinated by an anti-abortion extremist while serving as an usher at his church.

Julie Burkhart: My one big memory of him is just how deeply he cared about people. One of his tillerisms was, It's never too late to do the next right thing.

Melissa Harris-Perry: After his murder, Julie worked to reopen Dr. Tiller's clinic in Wichita.

Julie Burkhart: I could not stomach the fact that someone had walked into his place of worship and had taken his life in that way and was basically bullying everyone else into submission.

Melissa Harris-Perry: I asked Julie if she feels afraid for herself, her staff, her patients in this climate of rising anti-abortion harassment.

Julie Burkhart: I think about safety and security every day. It definitely weighs on me. I never want to put myself or anyone who works on our team in a position of jeopardizing their safety and security. We have many courageous physicians who are coming on to work with us. I want them. I want all of our staff members to be safe.

I was just having a conversation with someone a couple of days ago and running through the traps again about our mobile health unit. If it's going to be safe enough, if it's going to be secure enough, are we doing enough? Are there more pieces we need to put into place? That weighs greatly on my mind, but I think at the end of the day, at least for me personally, it goes back to what do we want to look like as a country?

Do we want people to have their freedoms, or are we going to allow ourselves to be bent into submission to people who would like to outlaw abortion in all 50 states, people who do perpetrate violence? I come down on the side of freedom. Even though there are these concerns, freedom outweighs that risk.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Tell me what your vision is, knowing there's struggle going forward, there there has been historically as well, but what looks to you like the future that you're fighting for?

Julie Burkhart: I think we saw some of this with the midterms, with the ballot measures. I think that Americans in these states spoke pretty loudly, especially if you look at Kentucky is one state in particular, where voters in that state spoke on the side of reproductive freedom. Even though Roe is gone, we are left with the Dobbs decision.

I think that this helps to show us and also what I feel in my gut is that even though we've lost Roe, even though we have lost rights in these various states across the country, that we have to begin to put together a plan in states that are at risk so that we can build back reproductive health rights and justice in those areas.

We have been defeated in this moment with Roe being overturned, but that does not mean that our struggle in our pursuit for reproductive freedom and equality is done in this country.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Julie Burkhart is the founder and president of Wellspring Health Access and co-owner of Hope Clinic in Granite City, Illinois. Julie, thanks so much for taking the time.

Julie Burkhart: Oh, thank you. This was lovely.

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