Waterbury, Vermont Planned Parenthood Abortion Referral Business Closes
by Steven Ertelt
LifeNews.com Editor
June 2, 2010
Waterbury, CT (LifeNews.com) — The Planned Parenthood abortion referral center in Waterbury, Vermont is closing up shop after having a location there since 1985. The center closed on May 27 and Grace Mayer, a staffer there, said it had been doing abortion referrals in addition to legitimate medical services.
"We used to be the only provider," in town, she told the Record newspaper, but it appears competition for legitimate medical services hurt Planned Parenthood.
"Now we have more providers in town, like Waterbury Medical, that’s made an impact," Mayer told the newspaper. "We had a lot of patients from the (Mad River Valley), but there are more practices — private practices — there and in Stowe as well."
Steve Trombley, president and CEO of Planned Parenthood’s northern New England chapter, also commented to the record about the decision to close the abortion referral facility.
"(We) made this decision because we have three health centers that are close by and ready to provide services to our Waterbury patients," he said. "The Hyde Park, Williston and Barre Health Centers are available to meet all of our patients’ health-care needs. We want to focus our resources more efficiently (to) allow us to continue to provide critical health care in numerous communities throughout northern New England."
Mayer explained that abortions were not done directly at the center but women seeking them were counseled to have one and sent to another Planned Parenthood facility to them.
Trombley says Planned Parenthood is facing financial difficulties as people choose to scale back on medical care during a tough economy.
Planned Parenthood is the largest abortion business in the United States, doing 305,310 abortions in its own facilities or just under one-third of all American abortions. But the billion-dollar abortion giant faced a tough year last year as it saw abortion centers close at a higher rate than normal.
Jim Sedlak, the director of STOPP International, a watchdog group, told LifeNews.com last December that he’s seen Planned Parenthood centers close over the years but never as fast as in 2009.
"STOPP has been fighting for 25 years to close down Planned Parenthood abortion facilities. During that time, we have seen the number of Planned Parenthood non-express clinics fall from a high of 938 in 1995 to 797 today," he explained.
"More significantly, 2009 saw the rate of Planned Parenthood closings go from one a month to over two a month," he said.
* Note: A previous version of this story mislabeled the center as located in Connecticut, this has been corrected and we apologize for the error.
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