maggiemoranNARALby Kelli

As Cahill stated in her victim impact statement, “Destroying persons, places, property because of a difference in belief is called TERRORISM… Zachary [Klundt] systematically destroyed my property, my profession, my plans for the future and, I feel quite sure he would have destroyed me if I had happened to show up at my office when he was in it. The feeling of hate in my destroyed office was palpable.” We cannot turn a blind eye to the real terrors experienced by [abortion] providers like Susan Cahill.

Even without anti-choice laws in place in Montana limiting abortion, we are seeing access decrease around the state. Of all the compounding factors limiting abortion access (and there are many), the loss of a clinic to violence is surely the most difficult to bear.

… For over a year, more than 400 Flathead Valley residents have been without their primary healthcare provider. That, in and of itself, is a horrible circumstance which Klundt created when he destroyed the clinic. But even beyond Susan, beyond her patients, beyond Kalispell or even Montana, this destruction has an insidious effect on abortion access because it creates a climate of fear in the medical community.

[W]e need to push back against this climate of fear and create safe spaces for medical professionals to talk about abortion access, it’s legitimacy in the medical field, how we can support abortion providers, and how we can ultimately increase access to this necessary, and legal, medical procedure.

~ NARAL Pro-Choice Montana executive director Maggie Moran (pictured), reacting to the sentencing of a man who vandalized the All Families Healthcare abortion facility in Montana, Bitter Root Star, June 23

[Photo via uwyo.edu]

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