Speaker reminds UU audience about importance of reproductive freedom

Dear Editor:

This past Sunday, the First Parish Unitarian Universalist Church in Canton welcomed longtime activist William Baird, of Eisenstadt v. Baird Supreme Court decision fame. He reminded us of all the deaths suffered by women who had the church and government interfere in their lives. As it appears we may be marching backwards into the coat-hanger abortions of the 1950s, it was important that our young women especially be reminded of how much work and jail time was involved in making birth control legal in Boston.

Baird was arrested at Boston University for illegally displaying a birth control device at a speech he gave there. Because there was a 14-month-old baby there, both he and the mother were arrested on obscenity charges. What seems ludicrous now was the rule back then, when the government controlled our bodies. Yet we are now faced with having all those gains struck down. Roe v. Wade followed Baird’s courageous legal suit by a year, and today I can have an abortion.

Next year I may not be able to. We cannot take our liberty for granted in a land where the ignorant are taking so much power. Thank you, William Baird.

Alice Copeland Brown

Short URL: https://www.thecantoncitizen.com/?p=15888

Posted by Canton Citizen on Aug 30 2012. Filed under From One Citizen to Another, Opinion. Both comments and pings are currently closed.