Abortion Rights Pioneer
Reporter Georgie Anne Geyer called Baird "father of abortion rights", a label that has oft been repeated for decades in the media. Baird established the nation's first abortion referral center in 1963 in Hempstead, New York.
In 1967 Baird facilitated the first abortion slush fund on a college campus.
A Washington Post article on Baird's clinic, with a waiting room packed with women from across the nation, reported, "It was 3.a.m. before the last patient saw Baird . . . Nowhere is such help available in the U.S." Baird risked a 10-year jail term for each of the thousands of women he helped to get abortions. Others provided abortion information anonymously through the mail; however, Baird was thoroughly out in the open doing so.
Baird continued fighting for reproductive freedom and directed three non-profit clinics that are now closed due to constant extremist opposition. In 1979, his Hempstead clinic was firebombed by anti-abortion terrorist Peter Burkin. All escaped due to Baird's training drills with his employees that prepared them for such a violent attack. Burkin was given a very light sentence, two years in a mental hospital. With his clinic under constant threat, Baird wrote and distributed the nation's first clinic self-defense manual to combat terrorism.
Read more about this topic: Bill Baird (activist)
Famous quotes containing the words abortion, rights and/or pioneer:
“If the vice president thinks it’s disgraceful for an unmarried woman to bear a child, and if he believes that a woman cannot adequately raise a child without a father, then he’d better make sure that abortion remains safe and legal.”
—Diane British (b. 1948)
“When and under what conditions is the black man to have a free ballot? When is he in fact to have those full civil rights which have so long been his in law?”
—Benjamin Harrison (1833–1901)
“Mead had studied for the ministry, but had lost his faith and took great delight in blasphemy. Capt. Charles H. Frady, pioneer missionary, held a meeting here and brought Mead back into the fold. He then became so devout that, one Sunday, when he happened upon a swimming party, he shot at the people in the river, and threatened to kill anyone he again caught desecrating the Sabbath.”
—For the State of Nebraska, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)