Culture | February 4th, 2015
Friday, Jan. 23, was a delicious night of Choice Desserts, an annual fundraiser for the Red River Women’s Clinic, taking place at the Alumni Center at North Dakota State University. As the only abortion clinic in North Dakota, the RRWC also serves women of northwestern Minnesota and northern South Dakota.
The desserts included lemon bars from Scratch Deli, cupcakes from Bakeology and Love in the Oven Bakery, almond bars from Josie’s Corner Café & Bake Shop, and caramel-apple pie from Perkins. Meanwhile, the silent auction raised a good deal of money for the Women in Need Fund (WIN), which has aided women in paying for reproductive healthcare services since 1999.
Auction items included gift cards, ticket vouchers to local theatres, and handmade items donated by local artists, including crocheted winter hats, beaded bracelets, two paintings, a paper crane mobile, and a framed cross-stitch piece that says “Girls just want to have fundamental human rights.”
Later in the evening, speakers took to the podium, starting with board president Miriam Mara and director Tammi Kromenaker. In addition to sharing news about reproductive rights legislation, both local and national, these women paid tribute to George Tiller, the Kansas physician who was murdered in 2009 for providing late-term abortions.
In the wake of his death, which sparked concerns about clinic security nationwide, Kromenaker was quoted as saying, “As we see what happened with Dr. Tiller, you can have all the security in the world and still not be safe.”
Mara and Kromenaker’s speeches were followed up by volunteers Jen Hoy, Nicole Kolbe, Warren Christensen, and Sarah Palm, who read the personal stories of real patients of the RRWC. These stories included a wide range of experiences, from that of a single mother with insufficient healthcare coverage to a mother of four who needed her uterus surgically removed to save her life.
Judging from these women’s stories, the RRWC seems to have no trouble providing a safe, secure facility where patients can get the medical attention, financial support, and counseling services they need. One woman even expressed her gratitude for the clinic paying for her bus fare and hotel room, as the WIN Fund covers not only abortion costs but also travel expenses for its prospective patients.
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