Montana Abortion Business in Livingston Expected to Open Early Next Month
by Steven Ertelt
LifeNews.com Editor
January 19, 2009
Livingston, MT (LifeNews.com) — The residents of the working class city of Livingston, Montana probably never imagined they would have an abortion business in their hometown. But former Bozeman abortion practitioner Susan Wicklund is putting the finishing touches on a new abortion center that is expected to open in early February.
Local pro-abortion activists there and in Bozeman are helping her complete the building of the Mountain Country Women’s Clinic, which will be housed in a converted former eye clinic.
Not everyone is happy about the new abortion facility and pro-life advocates have protested in front of the proposed building, but Wicklund seems undeterred.
“I understand they were here, but I was gone at the time,” Wicklund told the Bozeman Daily Chronicle. “That’s fine. That’s expected."
“But I’m not going away. They aren’t going to intimidate me now. I’ve been doing this for more than 20 years,” she continued.
Wicklund is no stranger to controversy as she formerly operated an abortion business in Bozeman from 1993 to 1998 under the same name before she closed it down to move to the Midwest to care for an ailing relative.
When Wicklund closed her abortion center, women in central Montana had to travel either to Helena or Billings for abortions. Upset that they had to make the two-three hour trip one way, Wicklund said she plans to resume doing abortions.
"Women should not have to travel over mountain passes and two-lane roads to obtain needed medical care," she told the Associated Press on Wednesday. "It breaks my heart."
Now she has returned to the picturesque state and will do abortions on women in southern Montana and likely some from Wyoming as well. She confirmed she will do surgical abortions up to 14 weeks into pregnancy.
Her abortion business comes at a time when the nation’s major abortion supplier, Planned Parenthood, has been cutting back in the state.
In January 2006, Planned Parenthood stopped doing abortions at its Missoula center. Though surgical abortions stopped at that time it said it would continue to dispense the dangerous RU 486 abortion drug. It has been responsible for the deaths of more than a dozen women in the U.S., Canada and elsewhere.
Elsewhere around Montana, Helena, Missoula, Kalispell and Billings have abortion centers, but Bozeman and Great Falls do not.
There were 2,119 abortions in 2006 in Montana with 1,930 done on Montana residents and the rest done on women from neighboring states. Bozeman residents had 220 of the abortions.
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