GRANITE CITY — New owners have purchased one of the region’s few abortion clinics and are looking to expand as more patients travel to the Metro East for care.
Three longtime pro-choice advocates took over operations this month of the Hope Clinic for Women in Granite City. The new owners include a 40-year veteran of abortion advocacy, an expert in maternal and child health, and an executive who has spent decades trying to make abortions more accessible in the Midwest.
The sale comes at a crucial moment for the Hope Clinic. If the Supreme Court overturns Roe v. Wade, the landmark 1973 decision that established a constitutional right to abortion, the procedures would be further restricted in many states, and more patients would likely travel to Illinois for care. The Hope Clinic and the Planned Parenthood clinic in Fairview Heights together may see thousands of additional patients each year if the court issues such a decision.
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Julie Burkhart, one of the new co-owners, said on Tuesday that the facility is already seeing higher volumes of patients, and is looking at how to increase capacity.
“We are working on ramping up now,” Burkhart said. “We want to be as prepared as we can be.”
Besides expanding, Burkhart said she wants to make sure the quality of care offered at the Hope Clinic remains consistent, and that staff are taken care of. The Hope Clinic, at 1602 21st Street in Granite City, has around 40 or 50 employees, including doctors, security, administrators and support staff.
“This is a really tumultuous, challenging time for people working in abortion care,” Burkhart said.
She said the group purchased the clinic from the family trust of Dr. Hector Zevallos.
Zevallos founded the Hope Clinic in 1974. In a high-profile incident in 1982, Zevallos and his wife were abducted from their home near Edwardsville and held for eight days before being released.
Burkhart said the previous owners approached her in March 2021 about purchasing the clinic, and it took over a year before it was finalized on May 31. The clinic has always been a stand-alone facility, and Burkhart said there are no immediate plans to change that, or merge with her Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit, Wellspring Health Access.
Burkhart’s career in the movement began with a summer job during college at the front desk of the Wichita Women’s Center in Wichita, Kansas. She worked there in 1991 during the “Summer of Mercy,” when anti-abortion protesters flooded into the city by the thousands.
Dr. George Tiller, a high-profile doctor in the pro-choice movement, recruited Burkhart to run a political action committee he founded, called ProKanDo. After Tiller was killed in 2009 by an anti-abortion extremist, Burkhart founded Trust Women, an organization that reestablished abortion care at Tiller’s former clinic in Wichita in 2013, and opened a second facility in 2016, in Oklahoma City.
Burkhart went on to found and serve as the president of Wellspring Health Access, a group that plans to open a clinic in Casper, Wyoming. The clinic was expected to open this month, but on May 25 a woman set fire to the building. The damage will likely delay the clinic’s opening by about six months, Burkhart said Tuesday.
Burkhart said her work has been motivated by strongly held beliefs that people must have agency over their bodies.
“If we don’t let people decide when they’re going to become a parent, if they’re going to become a parent, how big their family might be ... I just feel very deeply that that person, then, does not have complete freedom,” Burkhart said. “People can be trusted with these decisions.”
Co-owners are 40-year advocate Kathy Dean, who lives in Omaha, Nebraska, and Chelsea Souder, who has a master’s degree in public health, specializing in maternal and child health. Souder is the founder and director of Nebraska Abortion Resources, a statewide abortion fund.
