Author tells story of work as abortion doctor

By AMANDA RICKER Chronicle Staff Writer

A month before the first murder of an abortion provider in 1993, Dr. Susan Wicklund opened a clinic in the Medical Arts Building on Willson Avenue near downtown Bozeman.

For the next five years, amid protestors and death threats, Wicklund helped all types of women -- ranchers, students, young and old, Catholic and not --end an unwanted pregnancy.

Now, she's telling the story. A significant part of “This Common Secret: My Journey as an Abortion Doctor,” co-authored by Bozeman's Alan Kesselheim, takes place in the Gallatin Valley.

The two will host a book signing 7 p.m. Thursday at the Country Bookshelf, 28 W. Main in Bozeman.

Wicklund, who still lives and practices reproductive medicine in the area, said she wrote the book to put a face to an abortion doctor and the patients they serve, hopefully opening dialogue about abortion. Patients' names have been changed.

“I've already had a number of anti-abortion people approach me and say, ‘I had no idea. What you're telling me is something different from what I've been told,'” Wicklund said Thursday during a phone interview from Albany, N.Y., a stop on her five-week book tour.

Abortions are the most common minor surgery in the United States, Wicklund said, yet they've taken on an aura of mystery that's unnerving.

She said that at current rates, nearly 40 percent of women have an abortion, a figure supported by the Guttmacher Institute, which researches reproductive health policy.

“My hope is that the book will make people talk about the women and their stories. We need to realize that this affects families across the United States.”

In the book, Wicklund describes her own difficult abortion, which drove her to become a doctor and provide women better reproductive care.

She tells the story of a military woman who had to return to Montana from Germany because the U.S. government wouldn't allow abortions in military facilities. Also, the stories of a young girl who was raped by her father, another who nearly let her unqualified friend perform her abortion and more.

The book opens with a story about Wicklund finally telling her grandmother what she does before her television interview airs on 60 Minutes. Her grandmother gives her approval by admitting for the first time that she helped perform an illegal abortion for her best friend that caused her friend to bleed to death.

“My grandmother considered herself a murderer and she carried that guilt and shame all those years and then told me about it, which was a real gift,” Wicklund said.

While operating the Mountain Country Women's Clinic in Bozeman, Wicklund received frequent death threats. She wore a bulletproof vest, carried a .38 caliber revolver and had security escorts. But as a whole, she said, the Bozeman community was very supportive.

Wicklund began writing the book with Kesselheim after protestors discovered where she lived, broke in and left leaflets by her bed. Kesselheim, a freelance writer, and his family took Wicklund in and she ended up living there for a year.

Wicklund closed her Bozeman clinic in 1998, not because of harassment, but to return to the Midwest to take care of her mother.

At the same time, she got cold feet about the book and stopped writing with Kesselheim. She started again after returning to Bozeman about four years ago.

Kesselheim helped convince her to tell her story. If women could be free to just be more open about abortion a lot of the debate would go away, he said.

“These are real people in real situations and it makes that whole (anti) argument pretty moot,” Kesselheim said. “ Š Every time (Wicklund) has said, ‘This is who I am. This is what I do, and these are the people who come to my clinic,' she gets support.”

Amanda Ricker can be reached at 582-2628 or aricker@dailychronicle.com

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