MCCL Goes on Tour

Minnesota Citizens Concerned for Life has announced its “fall tour” for 2007, but if you live in the Twin Cities, you’d better plan ahead.

Though the tour will feature 50 sites throughout the state, none of those stops is located in Minneapolis or St. Paul, and only two — in West St. Paul on Oct. 23 and Crystal on Oct. 24 — are located in Twin Cities suburbs.  Two more, in Albertville on Oct. 8 and Waconia on Oct. 23, are in the exurbs.

The tour will make stops in Blue Earth, Mankato, Winona, La Crescent, Redwood Falls and Sleepy Eye, as well as larger cities such as Duluth and Rochester.

MCCL’s website says the tour is “intended to bring chapters, members and interested citizens up to date on matters central to the protection of human life.”

It continues, “While the focus [of the tour] on almost unrestricted abortion is always central, new threats to the ill, disabled and elderly are immerging [sic].”

Kathi Di Nicola, director of Media Relations for Planned Parenthood Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota, was critical of MCCL’s whistle-stop approach.

“Planned Parenthood has clinics in many of these communities and we work every day to provide essential health care and education to the women, men and families that live in Greater Minnesota,” she said in a statement given to Minnesota Monitor.  “Access to reproductive health care and birth control works — it’s a proven way to prevent unintended pregnancy. We do more to keep women healthy and reduce the need for abortion in communities across the state than groups like the MCCL will do in a lifetime.”

The tour begins Sept. 9 in Fairmont and Grand Marais and concludes Oct. 30 in Sauk Rapids.