Clear Channel bows to pressure to air ads for former Tiller abortion facility
WICHITA, Kansas, August 30, 2013 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Ads for an abortion facility will soon fill Kansas airwaves, after a Clear Channel radio station has changed its policy, according to a pro-life group.
"For several months Clear Channel radio refused paid ads from the new South Wind abortion clinic operating inside George Tiller's former abortion clinic in Wichita," said Kathy Ostrowski, the legislative director of Kansans for Life. “After news that South Wind was going to present them with a 68,000 signature petition, Clear Channel has caved, even though petition gatherers admitted that the 'vast majority' of signers are from outside Wichita.”
"In other words, East and West coast liberals insist Clear Channel help encourage Kansas women to get abortions!" Ostrowski said.
A call by LifeSiteNews to Clear Channel operations manager in Wichita, Tony Matteo, to request an explanation for the network's about-face regarding the abortion clinic ads resulted in a recorded message saying his office was closed. A voicemail message requesting comment was not returned by press time.
The South Wind Women's Center collected signatures from across the country in partnership with Women, Action & the Media, a pro-abortion group that advocates for gender equity in media, according to an AP report.
Jaclyn Friedman, the director of the gender equality group that helped South Wind in their national petition drive, "had the audacity to claim that they are ‘concerned about the precedent that could be set if it is allowed to stand — where a private company can decide whether or not local women get information about how to access health care,'" Ostrowski said.
Kansans for Life Executive Director Mary Kay Culp responded that Clear Channel does indeed have the right to determine what ads it will run.
"First, a private company certainly enjoys that right," Culp said.
"Second, I can safely say that Clear Channel did not originally object to the ads because they promoted 'health care,'” she added. “Abortion is not health care. Abortion is the killing of an unborn human child for money – South Wind 's specialty – again overseen by George Tiller's former employee who helped that clinic as it performed 3,000 late-term abortions here the first ten years of this century!"
Julie Burkhart, a former employee at the clinic, who also acted as head of George Tiller’s political action committee, ProKanDo, runs South Wind Women’s Center.
Her new organization, the Trust Women Foundation, purchased the site where Tiller's clinic operated with the intention of “keeping Dr. Tiller’s legacy alive.”
Kansans for Life has started its own petition to counter that presented to Clear Channel by the abortion clinic.
"If they want to play the national petition game, I dare say we could outnumber them 10 or a 100 to one – like we have every January in D.C. and all the state capitals for 40 years," stated Mary Kay Culp.
She asked pro-lifers from across the country to sign a new petition, to be delivered on November 1, All Souls Day.
She also asks people to contact Clear Channel Radio at 316-494-6600, and speak with operations manager, Tony Matteo.
“Please be courteous and polite,” Culp said. Then “express your disappointment that they have decided to run the abortion clinic advertisements, and ask him to reconsider that decision.
The petition asking Clear Channel radio to adopt their original stance and refuse advertising from the South Wind abortion clinic in Wichita, Kansas is available here.
The site has a link to vote against the ads.
http://www.lifesitenews.com/ne...r-tiller-abortion-fa
