Both sides are claiming victory in seven weeks of anti-abortion demonstrations that divided the city and returned the abortion issue to the national spotlight.
The protests and blockades of three clinics by members of Operation Rescue exhausted police, federal marshals and municipal court workers.Clinic patients and employees faced shouting, hostile crowds when they came and went. And the protesters' defiance of a court order angered a federal judge.
Authorities made more than 2,650 arrests of more than 1,500 people on charges ranging from assaulting federal marshals and police to trespassing and loitering.
"What Operation Rescue did was make it very clear to people what kind of havoc and terror that fanaticism and zealotry can create," said Peggy Jarman, spokeswoman for the ProChoice Action League of Wichita. "It moved middle-of-the-road people into the pro-choice camp. In the long term, that's very positive."
For Operation Rescue, the most important thing was that at least 31 women decided against having abortions, said Keith Tucci of Charleston, S.C., executive director of the national anti-abortion group.
"Rescuing 31 babies unjustly sentenced to death" is worth whatever personal or monetary price it cost, Tucci said.
Operation Rescue began demonstrations at the three Wichita abortion clinics July 15. The group targeted Wichita because one clinic is among only a few nationwide that perform late-term abortions. Two of the clinics obtained federal court orders against interference by protesters.
A federal judge Friday ordered abortion protest leaders to get out of town and stay out. Their departures left the protest in local hands.
Jarman was skeptical that 31 women had changed their minds about abortions. She said the counseling process at the clinics would have separated them out anyway.
"If indeed it's true, which I doubt, where are these women?" Jarman said. "If these people are so ecstatic and so happy and so saved, where are they? They would make marvelous spokespeople, even if you had to protect their identities," Jarman said.
Operation Rescue leaders said publicly introducing any of the 31 women would invade their privacy.