THE VFA PIONEER HISTORIES PROJECT

Bill Baird

“Reach out to one another and care, and say, ‘How can I help you?’ Most of all, please vote. You can lose your whole dignity and freedom.  I’m telling you from a 92-year-old guy, we’re in big danger. Wake up, world. You’re not going to get a second chance.”

Interviewed by Judy Waxman, July 2024

BB:  My name is Bill Baird. I was born, believe it or not, in 1932, in Brooklyn, New York, in a very humble hospital, in a very poor area, in the Great Depression.

JW:  Great. Well, tell us a little about your life before you got involved in these women’s issues.

BB:  I grew up in the Great Depression, so already I was behind the eight-ball as one of six children of immigrant parents. Two of the children died from the poverty we were in. We didn’t have money for doctors. I vowed if I ever got out of that poverty, I would do my best to try to fight back and help, particularly women, because my mother was an immigrant and my father was. It was a marriage made in heck, because they were illegal immigrants at first, and then they became legal. It was a struggle all the time to hear them fighting and the physical violence and so forth. My goal was eventually graduate college, which I did, and here I am still fighting at 92.

JW:  That’s wonderful. Tell me, where did your parents come from?

BB:  My mother was born in Germany and came to the United States around the age of 15. She was 16 when she had her first child with my father, but the baby died at the age of one. My father came from Scotland, and he got here about 19 years old. They married shortly after they met. And then, as you know, World War II was a few years later. I was nine years old when that happened. My sister died when I was nine and that took a lot out of me because I could not understand it.

JW:  A lot of tragedy. Well, so, how did you get involved in women’s issues? How did that happen?

BB:  I graduated college and went to the US Army Intelligence Corps. After that, my first job was at a place called Sandoz Pharmaceuticals. They made women’s products that were used to stop the bleeding after you went through childbirth. Sandoz Pharmaceuticals was an international firm that came out of Switzerland, but they were a great company here in the United States. They made products that were called oxytocin drugs, primarily used for childbirth.

So, what would happen is you would take it, it caused the uterus to contract, and minimize its bleeding, but on the other hand, if you don’t get your period and you take it, it can cause your uterus to contract and expel the developing embryo. And so that was my first exposure to it. I saw women in offices who were about to undergo quote, “extra treatment,” which meant an extra amount of the oxytocin drugs. That was the beginning. And then later, I got hired by a drug company that made specifically, birth control products, called Emko Contraceptive Foam.

That was my lesson. When I learned of the suffering, I was at a place called Harlem Hospital coordinating research. I heard a scream, I raced into the hallway of the hospital, and sure as heck, there was a young woman there with blood cascading out of her body with an eight-inch piece of coat hanger sticking out of her body.

And it so infuriated me that this woman; because she was where I came from, a poor woman, one of nine kids she said that she had, and she suffered, and died. And I went to the power people, Planned Parenthood and all the others, for political or whatever reasons, they were not champions, despite what many, many people may think, particularly for unmarried people.

JW:  What year was that?

BB:  That was ’63. Their literature said, Abortion takes the life of a child. They were anti- abortion. I know you’re on the board, but you probably are not aware of that.

JW:  So that really raised your consciousness about what was going on.

BB:  Well, more than that, being conscious is one thing, but doing something about it is a whole different ballgame. You risk your freedom. I was put in prison eight times in five states in that period of time. It was kind of scary, because I was a father of four small children and it was very difficult. I had to do what I thought was the best I could for our family, but I also wanted to fight for women’s rights. I thought of my sister who died at the age of twelve, and at the age of twelve, that poor soul lost her life because we didn’t have money for a doctor. That was insane to me. Nobody should die because of economics.

JW:  So, what did you do?

BB:  Well, nothing I could do. In those days, they would drive the hearse around your neighborhood as a final goodbye, and neighbors would run out and pet the coffin goodbye, as I did. I remember crying to her, “Please come out. Come out, Louise, come out.” And I wept. And she couldn’t come out, obviously.

JW:  Well, but you just said that you wanted to do something in a bigger way.

BB:  I established very quickly the foe was two things. Apathy, and number two, the laws that existed. Rich people could always get it done. It was the poor people like I was, who could not get it done, and I decided I would fight that. So, I went to Planned Parenthood. They basically said, “We’re only involved with trying to change the law for married people.” But unmarried people have sex too. So, I decided on my own; that was a shocking thing to me, everyone said, “Gee, Bill Baird, you got guts. You’re going to do it. We’ll help you.”  But they all looked the other way.

JW:  What did you start doing?

BB:  Well, I set up my first clinic in 1963 with a big sign in the window, Free Birth Control and Abortion Care. And then there was a magazine called SEPIA, the black publication, which reached basically poor people. I don’t know how well you can see it, but it is my phone number on the cover. ’67 mind you, that was a jail term. We didn’t know when the law would be changed, but I was saying, “If you arrest me, I will challenge the law, hopefully, and get it heard by the US Supreme Court.” That was my goal. Planned Parenthood put in their literature, in my possession, “Nothing to be gained by the Baird case.”

JW:  Before we get to the case, how did you fund this clinic and give out free birth control?

BB:  Well, I’m very much like a fox, as I saw myself, because how does a fox outwit all these people wanting to kill him or hurt him? So, I decided I’d form a nonprofit group, but I couldn’t say the word abortion in it because then they would say no to me to be approved by the state. I called it the Parents Aid Society. And I guess I was right, because it went right through, no questions asked.

I was the first approved birth control abortion group for unmarried people. I said, “Where would I set up this place?” What better place than where I knew so well? A black poor community called Hempstead, Long island. So, I set it up there, and lo and behold, in 1965, I was arrested for showing birth control devices to poor people. I challenged the law, 1142.

JW:  What I want to know is, how did you fund that? Who paid for it all?

BB:  Well, no one paid for it. I was a pretty good lecturer in the sense that people were saying, “Who’s this guy? A man fighting for essentially women’s rights, risking going to jail up to ten years in any one of the different states? Why would he do that? Is he crazy or is something else motivating him?” 

And so, I finally convinced enough people that my goal was one goal, altruistically, to help people like my sister. That nobody would be forced to die, or try to self-abort with coat hangers and knitting needles. When I set up my clinic, people came to me from all over the United States.  These women would tell me they tried to self-abort by taking douching bags and filling them with Lysol or bleach or turpentine.  Or, they would take a baster and fill it with salt water in order to induce an abortion.

But by squeezing that syringe of the baster, you force air into a blood vessel, and you’re dead by the time you hit the floor of an air embolism. So, I said, “It’s horrendous,” and again, I made appeals to the powerful people. Planned Parenthood was a great group and they were doing great, important stuff. But they, for political reasons of their own, did not want to touch this. And I said, “Well, that’s your decision. You live with your conscience. I’m living with my conscience, and I’m not going to let another woman die if I can help it.” And that’s what I did.

People got word out, and this is way before your time, but Alan Burke, Joe Pine, these were top talk shows, and they used to call me up. Nobody else was talking about this or even offering plans to fight for it. I grew up in the slums of Brooklyn, and if you see a bully and he hits you, you hit him back. And so, the most obvious ones I would go after, would be the religious ones. And from day one, I said, “This is a holy war”, which you’re seeing today with the evangelicals, for one, and then what I did to kind of understand my enemy, they formed the National Right to Committee, and I attended the Right to Life convention every year from 1973 to 2014.

It was open to the public, and I went to them, and I kind of made friends with a lot of them. I used to sing in the church choir, so they knew that I knew all of the religious songs and was an opera singer and I had a fairly good voice, according to some of them. So, I sang the songs, and they were fascinated in how a “heathen” quote-unquote, devil, quote-unquote, could be so religious with knowing all the right songs, on key, and would join them. So, they kind of liked me. I was a curiosity.

But I was watching what they were doing, and then I would go back to our side, Planned Parenthood and NARAL, all of them; I was on the board of directors of NARAL and ACLU, and I would tell them what I saw. And I said, “There’s about 2000 people, but they’re mostly women. They’re not men like you’re saying, they’re women.” I said, “You’ve got to realize it’s not just men who are fighting you, it’s women who are fighting you.”

Like Phyllis Schlafly, if you remember her, she alone destroyed our efforts with the ERA. She was a very smart lawyer and a very smart and effective fighter. So, I said, “We’ve got to accept everybody, men, women, as long as their heart is in the right place and help each other and care about each other.” And that’s what I grew up with in Brooklyn, growing up in the slums. Love one another, care about each other, be our own brothers’ and sisters’ keeper.

JW:  So, was this before or after the first lawsuit when you joined this anti-abortion group?

BB:  Well, I joined the anti-abortion group at the very beginning because that’s when they really started to organize, in 1973. Birth control became legal in ’65, with the Griswold case, but that was a limited case despite all the rhetoric about it. It was only for married people. I wanted to go beyond that. I thought, there were millions and millions of unmarried people. My youngest patient was twelve years old, a kid who was raped by her father.

So, I wanted to try to help as many younger people as I could and that’s what my goal was, but that was an unpopular position. I understood power groups like Planned Parenthood were dependent on funding, and they needed help. My goal was to try to do, regardless of money, just do what was the right thing, and hopefully people would read about me and they would help me out with some of the funding. And that happened in some cases, but nowhere near what I needed, to do all that I had hoped I could do.

JW:  So, tell me about when you got arrested.

BB:  Well, the funny thing is, during the 1960s my brother was a pretty well-known doctor, Robert Baird, MD. He was a drug addition specialist as well as an internist in Harlem and New York City. And so, I used to visit him there and I saw some of his patients. 12 years old, 13,14, were prostitutes, and drug addicts. And I said, “Boy, that’s horrible, Robert.”

And so, I thought what I would do is, I’d go to his area, because they knew his name, so I said, “I’m Bill Baird, brother of Dr. Baird, would you let me rent one of your rooms for an hour and I can talk to the people living your building?” He said, “Sure.” I didn’t know what I was really doing. I said, “I’m going to talk about health issues.” So, I did. I came back a month later, after I had talked to him and I was well received, he said, “Baird, you can’t come here.” I said, “Why?” “My priest said, if you come here again, I’m going to burn in hell, so you cannot come back.”

So, where do you go now? I have no place to go. And as I was driving home, because I worked for the drug company, I saw a United Parcel truck for sale. I said, “Why don’t I buy one of those, fix it up like a living room, and drive it into Harlem and Bedford Stuyvesant and all these areas, and drive into where they live, and maybe they’ll come into the van.”

About 30 seats I had in there, made a little fake fireplace, and I drove and it was so successful. So, in 1965, cops came up to the van, saw me giving out Emko foam, said “You’re under arrest for indecent exposure of indecent objects, birth control, in New York.” And there was a law, 1142. Percy Sutton, who ran for president later, was a very powerful political figure, who I didn’t know, but he called me up. He says, “You’re a gutsy guy, I’ll help you.” And he helped me, and I fought the law and we got the law changed.

JW:  And what happened after that?

BB:  Then I got a call from a mother in Freehold, New Jersey; I didn’t know Freehold from a hole on the wall, and she was crying. I said, “What can I do to help you?” She says, “They’re going to put me in jail.” I said, “Why?” “Because I have three children, and I’m not married.” “So what? Why is that a crime?”

And I realized though, from her, there’s a law called the Law on Fornication. If you fornicate and have sex, but you’re not married, that’s a one-year jail term. So, I said, “That’s nuts. I’ll go there. I’ll talk to them.” I drove the mobile clinic there after I called them and said I was coming.

They said, “Well, if you come, you’re going to jail” because I told him what I was going to do. And so, I got there, there was not 1, not 2, but over 50 cops stationed. All I had was a can of foam, a birth control pill, and the IUD. That’s all I had. Well, they arrested me, convicted me, and to make a long story short, I finally got the law changed.

And then I got a letter and a phone call from Ray Mungo, who was the editor of the Boston University newspaper in Boston. He says, “Bill, I’ve read about you. Would you fight our law?” I said, “You’ve got Planned Parenthood there.” He said, “Are you kidding me? We picketed them. They won’t give us birth control because we’re not married.” “That’s not right,” I said. So Ray Mungo asked, “Will you fight the law?” And he sent me the law, it was a ten-year jail term. I said, “Look, I got four kids. I don’t have money for a lawyer.” He says, “We already anticipated that. We have a lawyer. The ACLU promised us they would defend you.

And here’s where the plot thickened. When I showed up, I thought there’d be a couple hundred people. There were over 2000 students, a record number, came to see me get arrested and to challenge the law. So, I got there, and I challenged the law, the police arrested me, and as they were handcuffing me, I said, “Hold it. I was told the ACLU is going to be here to defend me. Are you here?” No response. My heart sank. I called a second time, “Where’s the ACLU?” No response.

The third time they said, “Mr. Baird, James Hamilton, director, ACLU in Boston. We will defend you.” And now the shocking part, which I know you know nothing about. What happened was, I get a phone call a week later, “Bill, this is James Hamilton. We discussed your case with Planned Parenthood. Your case is too upsetting to too many people, with the unmarried people, we’re not going to defend you.” I’m on my own, facing ten years in prison. Wow. Now, what do I tell a wife? What do you want me to do in the first place, four little kids? And I said, “Holy smokes, what am I going to do?”

Out of nowhere, a very tough guy, Joe Balliro, he’s known for [being] the Mafia attorney. He said, “I like a tough guy.” He says, “You’re tough. I’ll defend you.” Fantastic. So, he started to defend me. We go into court and he’s a brilliant lawyer and he’s winning the case.

I said, “Joe, Joe, Don’t do this. You got to take a dive.” I used to box. You take a dive. Take a dive. “We want to lose the case. How do we get heard by the US Supreme Court if we win?” “Oh, man, you want to lose? I never had anybody want to lose.” I said, “I’ve got to lose to be heard by the Supreme Court.” So, we lost, and we appeared before the Supreme Court. This only came out in a film that was recently made about me.

So, what the heck to do? When I got a call from; you probably know this guy, Senator Ernest Gruening, who was the governor of Alaska. He was big in the population field at that time. He said, “Bill, look, I want you to fire Joe Balliro.” I said, “How can I fire the guy? He’s the only guy who would defend me.”

He said, “No, no, no, I got good news for you.” I said, “What’s that?” He said, “The head of the Population Growth Committee in DC said, he’ll defend you, Senator Tydings, free. He’s been a supporter of yours, and he wants to have the honor of defending you before the Supreme Court.” And I said, “I can’t do that.” He said, “Bill, you told me you care about the lives of women. If you save one woman’s life, would that be enough?” I said, “You put it very bluntly. You’re absolutely correct. That’s what my life is about.”

So, I fired Joe, and of course, he hit the ceiling. He says, “I was loyal to you.” I said, “I know that, but I’m loyal to women first. And I said, “I have to fire you because he said to me that Senator Tydings was friends with the Supreme Court.” He went out with them to lunch, they played tennis together, and common sense told me, if you pal around with Supreme Court judges, you have a better chance of winning, than if they don’t know who you really are.

So, they took the case, and they tried this nonsense. They said “Oh, Baird, you have no standing because you’re not a lawyer.” I said, “But I’m going back to jail if I lose so who would have more standing?” That was my argument. And they listened to me and they took my case, and Senator Tydings did a magnificent job, and we won the case.

JW:  That was 1972.

BB:  1972. They said, “If the right of privacy means anything, it is the right of the individual, married or single, to be free from unwarranted governmental intrusion into matters so fundamental affecting a person as the decision whether to bear or beget a child.” That was the foundation not only for the right of privacy for birth control, it was also quoted six times in Roe v. Wade, which few people know. Then as you may recall, a few years later, teenagers were under fierce attack and they couldn’t get abortions, and that’s when I came along in the case called Baird versus Bellotti. Another Supreme Court case that I won.

JW:  Tell me more about that. How did that happen?

BB:  Well, first of all, when I was told about the law and would I help them in Massachusetts; another group of students, I said, “Well, let me look at the law.” I read the law and I said, “Yes, I think I could devise a way.” You have to come up with plans how to fight them. So, I said, “Well, we’ll come up with some sort of plan, some sort of idea.” And I did. And we challenged the law, and appeared before the US Supreme Court.

That angered Planned Parenthood. They said, “We were going to take the case.” “Then what did you wait so long for?” They said, “We were waiting for the law to go into effect.” I said, “Don’t you realize I’m a street fighter? You don’t wait to get punched in the mouth. You punch first.” I learned that, you’re too young to know this. There’s a term called junking.

When I was eight years old, I’d go from garbage can to garbage can, because we were very poor, didn’t have money, there’s no welfare. And then I would kick the garbage can to chase the rats out and reach in, take the newspapers out. And you sell newspapers, because it was World War II then, for believe it or not, 100 pounds to get $0.75. So, bring it to the junkyard and take that money, sell it, and bring it to my mom, and we had food money. That was my background.

So, when it came to the teenagers, I said, “Look, teenagers are people. Parents are the last ones to know their kids are having sex lots of times, and they certainly are the last ones that want to talk to them about birth control.” When you’re poor, and people live in this poor apartment, they’re in the next bed to their parents and they watch their parents have sex. And so, these kids were introduced early.

So, I’m aware of all of these things. And I’m saying, “God almighty, somebody’s got to help these 12-year-olds, 13, 14-year-olds that I’m seeing.” And it was just; it made me cry. My sister died. I said, Louise, you’re not going to die in vain. I remember making that promise to her. And I have fought, what am I, 92?

Now not many 92-year-olds are still doing interviews, giving a rap about what happens to women’s rights. And then on the other hand, you’re told by your allies, “Get out of our movement.” “Why? What did I do wrong?” “You’re the wrong sex.” But I said, “I got five [hearings] at the Supreme Court; you know how hard it is to be heard one time, but to be heard five times? And you never saw the inside of a law school other than to lecture.” I said, “I must be doing something right.”

JW:  So, let’s go back to teenagers couldn’t get an abortion without their parents’ permission. That’s what the case was about, right? How did that actually come to be then, the case?

BB:  They said, “A teenager is way too young to make an important decision like this.” This is what I said to the court, I said, “Think with me. If the teenager has a baby, where’s the baby go? Normally, the baby goes home with the mother, which is a teenager. The teenager can make decisions for that baby. So, if she can make decisions for the baby, why can’t she make decisions to eliminate an unwanted pregnancy?”

And then sometimes the father would notice that his daughter had breasts, so they would actually seduce her, and have sex with her. And I said, “That’s pretty goddamn sick. “And I said, “That shouldn’t be.” So, I went to court, and the court overwhelmingly agreed with me. But believe it or not, I got a lot of grief from my allies who said, “Well, you’re destroying the family life because we think that teenagers are too young to make the decision.”

And I’m saying, “Teenagers are too young to become a parent. And I’d much rather they make the choice.” I had a mother call me once and said, “Look, I want her to go through the pregnancy.” I said, “Why?” “Because this way, she goes through the pregnancy, and she’ll never have sex again, because she’ll realize how difficult it is for her.” I said, “That’s the wrong thing. To punish your child with an unwanted pregnancy. That’s wrong.”

JW:  This case came out of your clinic. Is that what it was?

BB:  The kids came to see me, but the abortions were never done there because they would have closed me down instantly. I would have been practicing medicine without a license. See, when you do talk shows, people hear you who are enemies, pray for your death, and other people say, “Man, you’re a gutsy guy. I’ll work with you. I’m a physician. I’ve been doing this for years.” And so that’s when I said, “Okay.”

I used to work for a drug company called Sandoz Pharmaceuticals way back, and began when they made drugs that caused the uterus to contract. And by so doing that, they minimized bleeding, but it also causes the uterus to contract. That can dislodge the developing embryo. So, in that effort, enabled me to see firsthand, before there was a movement, before even anyone was talking, I said, “These women need help,” but nobody would help them.

I was the Medical Man of the Year for Sandoz, which was quite an honor because this is New York City, a top competitive market. And they said, “Why are you getting so many samples to your doctors?” I thought, they were a very heavy practice, very heavy, which really wasn’t the case. I knew what they were doing. A lot of them were doing extra childbirth, abortions.

But I also know these same doctors; if you could get two doctors to say that you were mentally ill, you’d commit suicide; two doctors is all you needed, you could get a legal abortion done to save your life. So, I said, “Why should the rich ones who can afford fancy Park Avenue doctors have this, and the poor ones like my sister, because you were poor, you could not get medical care.” I said, “That’s not right.” And that’s been my mantra all my life.

My clinic was free, by the way, it was a nonprofit clinic. Whatever you could give us to help us keep going, you did. One up in Boston and two in Long island. In fact, if you remember, when the Pope came to the United States, he visited Boston and I picketed him. They were very angry with me because the Boston police are mostly Irish Catholic.

When I told them about the death threats I was getting, they didn’t give a rap. In fact, they were hoping that maybe someone would succeed because my clinic was firebombed with 60 people in it and it was destroyed. I faced many death threats all the time. It’s crazy. You tell me you’re so pro-life, but you’re willing to kill the mother, kill me, kill everybody else?

JW:  Now, you did at one point join with Priests for Life, right?

BB:  Let me tell you, when I joined the Right to Life convention, I’d go there. First, they ordered me out and I had to leave. Then I called the police. I said, “It’s open to the public. I’m being harassed. I don’t talk to anyone unless they come over to talk to me.” So, the police came in, they escorted me in. So now I had police protection. So, once I’m inside there, they kind of liked me because they knew there was just one of me, 2000 of them.

And then at noon time, I would carry with me my symbol, because at that time I taught Sunday school. I had an eight-foot wooden cross which is in thousands of newspapers and it would say, “Free Women From the Cross of Religious Oppression.”  They kind of were amazed that somebody had the audacity to go there. But then, what I did, I made friends.

Priests for Life really made friends with me. He thought that he was going to convert me to becoming a Christian, because he says, “No one who knows all these hymns so well could be like this.” And I told him, “I’m this way because of what my religion says. That’s, love one another and help one another.” And that’s what I did all of my life, whether you like it or you don’t.

JW:  I read somewhere that you came up with, and I’m not remembering the priest’s name, about how violence should end from both sides.

BB:  I’ve been interviewed for, what, 50 years or more? You’re the only one who ever even knew that. I figured, “How do I stop this hatred?” I don’t know if you know, about that time, there were six different doctors who were shot to death, assassinated. And my clinic also was firebombed. I said, “This is nuts. There’s got to be a way that kindness, which is the foundation of most religions, should prevail.”

So, I called them up and I said, “Look, do you think we’re the only ones who get killed? Do you think we’re the only ones who can get firebombed? You think I can’t firebomb in the church? What makes you think I couldn’t do that? Sure, I’d be jailed, but;” so, he met with me, and he said, “You know, you make sense,” and he issued the following statement. He said, “All those in a pro-life movement should be respectful of life and avoid inflammatory rhetoric.” This is after meeting Bill Baird.

And I gave that to Planned Parenthood; which is a powerful document, I gave it to everyone else I could, and nobody would use it because it was brought by me. What a powerful weapon that was that you just mentioned. And you’re the only person in all these years who ever mentioned it in any interview. Now, why is that? Why did you spot it and saw the importance of that, and nobody else would use it after I sent it to them?

So, then the Father from Priests for Life met with my wife, and they wrote together a peace rally statement, and he said, “We shall avoid any kind of mention of violence. We will be loving and caring.” A beautiful statement. My wife wrote it up for him. He signed it, I signed it, Joni signed it, my wife, and we had the first statement where the catholic church basically saw the connection between violence and hate speech. But they did it only after meeting with me.

What a powerful statement, what a powerful weapon to use. I gave it to Planned Parenthood, to NOW, to all of them. And what do you think happened? Not one of them would use it, because Betty Freidan said, “Bill Baird is a CIA agent in the New York Times.” I don’t know how to fight that. I think I’m a decent guy. You may not like my tactics, that doesn’t interest me so much. You don’t like it, you do something better, or smarter. But in the meantime, while you’re doing that, I’ve got five Supreme Court cases.

JW:  Well, it was a powerful statement. Do you recall when that activity happened with Priests for Life?

BB:  About 2004.

JW:  Oh, okay. So that was obviously much more recent, but still.

BB:  Yes. Well, that was quite a document. 1979, I think it was, Cardinal Hickey in Cleveland, Ohio, I called him up and I told him, to stop inflammatory rhetoric because a clinic was firebombed in Cleveland and the police weren’t even investigating; I went to the police and I picketed the police. I said, “You get your tail going because we’re going to sue you privately, individually and collectively.” They would never have had anyone come up there and say that to them. They knew I had a reputation, very suit minded, I would sue everybody.

I remember, in Washington, DC; this is years back, you had a group called Lambs of God. They would walk on their hands and knees and blockade Planned Parenthood in DC. The steps were blocked so the patients couldn’t get in. I went up to the police officer in charge, I wrote down his phone number on his badge.

He said, “What are you doing?” I said, “I’m writing down your ID number.” He said, “Why?” “Because I’m going to sue you.” I said, “I hope you’ve got a nice house because I’m going to own your house.” He said, “What are you talking about?” I said, “What’s your job? Your job is to keep the peace. Stairway is blocked by these goons, and you cops are lifting the patients up, holding them high up in the air, and walking them gingerly up the crowded steps.”

Well, they could drop them and hurt them [taking them] into the clinic. I said, “That’s dead wrong. Your job is to remove these blockaders.” And I said, “That’s what I’m going to do.” And he says, “Is that what you’re going to do?” I said, “Yes, I don’t mess around.” And he cleared the steps and let all the patients walk in, but no one ever did that before.

Same thing happened in Dallas Texas, when Reverend Falwell had one of his first meetings there. They were blockading the building and I just walked right up to them and I said, “Hey, look, we’re going to go and blockade and picket the same place.” They said, “You can’t.” I said, “Says who?” They said, “Well, otherwise there’ll be fighting.” “Well, then your job is to keep them separate. Give them half the sidewalk, and I’ll have half the sidewalk. That’s fair.” People thought it was pretty dangerous, but the cops knew.

I’ll give you one last very quick thing that you might care to know. I think it was in Connecticut. I went up there, and Joni, my beloved courageous wife, comes up there with me. We go there and there’s several police cars, and they say, “You take out one picket sign and you’re going to go to jail.” I said, “What for?” This is at an airport where the hotel was, with the Right to Life convention. And they said, “You can’t picket at an airport because of the violence at airports from terrorists.”

I said, “Well, that’s very interesting. I’m still going to sue you.” “On what grounds?” I said, “Labor grounds. Your pilots, American Airlines, were on strike two weeks ago. So, you allowed them to picket.” “Well, they’re our employees.” “Sir,” I said, “That’s not part of the constitution. You can’t have people for labor be able to picket, and then say somebody from Baird v. Eisenstadt, the right of privacy means anything, the right to be free, not be able to be heard also.” He said, “I’m going to go back to our attorneys.” He went back, came back 15 minutes later. “Our attorneys agree with you. You can picket for an hour.” And I did. You got to think on your feet. And that’s growing up in the slums of Brooklyn. I had to think on my feet, to survive.

JW:  But you’re still doing it. It sounds like whatever it is that you feel is important, you’re doing it.

BB:  Can I tell you what’s fun? I have a love affair; a one man love affair with society. I grew up in the slums. So many people, and I didn’t have anything to help me. It’s such a beautiful world, you know, it’s so great when we really mean what we say. That we love each other, help each other, be kind to one another. Why can’t we do that? I don’t know why that’s so hard. I mean, I’m not a preacher. I’m just a man who loves people, and say, “Come on, you’re my sister. Reach out, touch each other, help each other, care for each other. That’s what life is supposed to be.” That’s my doctrine.

JW:  Well, you surely have done that.

BB:  Well, it doesn’t come across that way. I’m now 92, I sit back and I say, “Golly, where’s my allies?” You know, I’m fighting. It’s very, very hard. Try to exist when you don’t get paid for lectures or anything. It’s hard.

JW:  Do you have any closing comment?

BB:  Yes, my closing comments, first of all, this is the most unusual interview. I cannot tell you how immensely grateful I am for you, and the work you did in researching, finding out some of my battle fights, that made me feel really great inside. But the most important thing I would like to say is, Joni and I are just two people. Without her help, I could never do what I do. Because I can’t see so well, I can’t type, I couldn’t do this; these gadgets. I look at her and I say, “Wow, what a fascinating thing.” I wouldn’t know how to do it, but she does it all. So, I’m so immensely grateful to her.

And if I could just say, look at your neighbor. Get out in your neighborhood, help them vote. Show concern for what’s going on. Don’t let people call you murderer and killer. I don’t remember how many debates I’ve done and they would say, “Right to life, pro-choice,” I said, “No, no. I’m the one who’s right to life. I’m the one who saves lives. Women are alive today because I’m able to help them.” The fact that you deny them access to medical care, sometimes they die. A woman who died because she used a coat hanger, or knitting needle, or some other primitive device.

We have to understand, let every woman have her own choice. Women are not stupid. My mother was a very clever, smart woman. Otherwise, we could never have survived in the slums, and in the Great Depression, and in World War II all at the same time. Reach out to one another and care, and say, “How can I help you?” But most of all, please vote. You can lose your whole dignity and freedom. We know it today. I’m telling you from a 92-year-old guy, we’re in big danger. Wake up, world! You’re not going to get a second chance!