BANGOR – Patients and staff at the Mabel Wadsworth Women’s Health Center can look forward to greater privacy and more comfortable surroundings when the practice relocates later this year.

By moving the clinic from its longtime home in a Harlow Street strip mall to an upscale condominium in a private professional park on Mount Hope Avenue, Executive Director Ruth Lockhart also hopes to discourage anti-abortion picketers, revamp the facility’s gritty image, and attract a better-heeled clientele to help support its mission.

The clinic has been located at InTown Plaza since 1992.

Lockhart said earlier this week that the upcoming move to Evergreen Woods is driven chiefly by the need for more space.

During a tour, she pointed out patient records stacked in file cabinets in the cramped kitchen, medical and diagnostic equipment stashed in the corner of a counseling office and instrument trays taking up space in the narrow hallway.

Her own office doubles as a conference room for the 11-person staff, and in the tiny waiting room, clients sit nearly knee-to-knee while waiting for their appointments.

In addition to more spacious offices, expanded clinical space and better storage, Lockhart acknowledged that Evergreen Woods offers several other advantages.

“We’ve needed to move [for space reasons] for several years,” she said. “And in researching the area, we’ve thought more about our security needs and the privacy of our patients.”

Among the many reproductive health services they provide – routine exams, prenatal care and much more – practitioners at the center perform safe, legal abortions for women who elect to terminate a pregnancy.

The clinic’s high visibility at InTown Plaza, along with its unswerving political advocacy for the protection of abortion rights, have made it a target of anti-abortion protesters.

Picketers with large, graphic posters showing photos of aborted fetuses hold regular vigils at the edge of the streetside parking lot – a constitutionally protected activity on public property, though many clients and passers-by complain of feeling harassed and intimidated.

At Evergreen Woods, picketers will be unable to get close to the health center. They may legally demonstrate on Mount Hope Avenue at the entrance to the park, but since dozens of professional offices are housed along the winding roads of the forested site, there is no way to identify those clients who may be headed for the clinic, Lockhart said.

But picketer Ron Stauble of Unity said Wednesday that the center’s relocation won’t stop committed protesters like himself from getting their pro-life message out. “If they’re moving out there, then that’s where we’ll be,” he said.

Stauble said he’s picketed at InTown Plaza each week for about 10 years, and he takes credit for convincing at least 17 women to turn back from having abortions.

“These young kids don’t know what they’re getting into,” he said. “I show them pictures of what [a fetus] looks like at 6 weeks, 8 weeks… they see it’s not just a piece of tissue like they’ve been lied to all these years.”

Stauble said he and others picketed another physician practice at Evergreen Woods years ago. Though Mount Hope Avenue offers lower visibility than Harlow Street, it’s a better place to hand out literature and talk to drivers as they slow down to make the turn into the park, he said.

Kevin Cuddy, president of the condominium association at Evergreen Woods, said there has been no debate among practice owners about either the presence of the clinic or the possibility of picketers at the entrance to the park.

“It’s really been a nonissue,” Cuddy said Wednesday. “Mabel Wadsworth Center is entitled to run their business and [Stauble] has a First Amendment right to do what he’s going to do.”

Cuddy added that any picketers should be careful not to interfere with vehicles entering the park and cautioned that Mount Hope Avenue has no sidewalk.

Lockhart said she expects the move to be accomplished by the end of this year, at the latest. While initially the clinic will lease its new 5,000-square-foot condominium unit, she anticipates purchasing the unit within three years.

She noted that in 1997, Mabel Wadsworth Center merged with Bangor Women’s Healthcare, located at Evergreen Woods at the time. “So for at least half our clients, moving to Evergreen Woods is like moving back home,” she said.

Only a few of the center’s clients rely on public transportation, Lockhart said, but for those that do, the bus stops on Hogan Road, just a short walk from the park entrance. If the walk, or potential interaction with picketers, becomes a problem: “We’re activists; we’ll deal with it,” she said firmly.

Lockhart said she hopes Evergreen Wood’s genteel environs will encourage more women with private insurance to get their health care at Mabel Wadsworth Center.

Because the clinic does not qualify for federal funding other than scanty Medicare and Medicaid reimbursements, every privately-insured client is a boon, making it possible to serve more low-income women and supporting the center’s political advocacy, she said.

“You should come here because you want your health care dollars to go to a place that stands up for the reproductive rights of all women,” Lockhart said. “It’s time to put your co-pay where your politics are.”