Father of the ABORTION RIGHTS MOVEMENT is Back /// BILL BAIRD SPEAKS OUT

Iconic Activist, Bill Baird joins Reverend Barry W. Lynn to react to the recent leaked supreme court ruling on overturning Roe vs. Wade. Bill Baird talks about the history of the abortion-rights and birth control movement and where we go from here.

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Bill Baird (born June 20, 1932) is a reproductive rights pioneer, called by some media the "father" of the birth control and abortion-rights movement. He was jailed eight times in five states in the 1960s for lecturing on abortion and birth control. Baird is believed to be the first and only non-lawyer in American history with three Supreme Court victories.

In 1967 hundreds of students at Boston University petitioned Baird to challenge a Massachusetts law that prohibited providing contraception to unmarried persons. On April 6, 1967, he gave a lecture at Boston University, during which he gave a condom and a package of over-the-counter contraceptive foam to a female college student. He was immediately arrested and eventually jailed. His appeal of his conviction culminated in the 1972 Supreme Court decision Eisenstadt v. Baird, which established the right of unmarried persons to possess contraception on the same basis as married couples. U.S. Supreme Court Justice William J. Brennan, Jr. wrote in that decision: "If the right of privacy means anything, it is the right of the individual to be free from unwarranted governmental intrusion into matters so fundamentally affecting a person as to whether to bear or beget a child." Eisenstadt v. Baird has been described as "among the most influential in the United States during the entire century by any manner or means of measurement".

Bill Baird's advocacy for reproductive rights began in 1963 after witnessing the death of an unmarried mother of nine children who died of a self-inflicted coat hanger abortion.

In 1963, he began giving away EMKO birth control foam samples including at malls where his activities often met with religious opposition. In 1966 Baird established the first birth control club on a college campus at Hofstra University.

He was sent to jail for teaching birth control and distributing abortion literature in New York, New Jersey, and Wisconsin. Baird's punishment galvanized feminists like Anne Koedt to speak out in his defense. On May 13, 1965, he challenged New York's anti-birth control statute, law 1142. He was arrested in Hempstead, NY and jailed for teaching birth control out of his mobile "Plan Van." Baird's challenges led to the legalization of birth control in New York. Planned Parenthood President Alan Guttmacher criticized Baird and stated that Baird was "overenthusiastic and every couple seeking birth control information should seek a physician."

In 1966, Baird challenged New Jersey's restrictive birth control statute after the commissioner of welfare threatened to jail unwed mothers under the law of fornication.

Baird challenged restrictive birth control laws in the state of Wisconsin in 1969 and was again arrested and jailed for showing "birth control and indecent articles" to a Northland College audience in Ashland.

He fought to legalize birth control without the support of major pro choice or feminist organizations, several of which attacked him. Betty Friedan of the National Abortion Rights Action League (NARAL) has implied many times since 1971 that Baird was a "CIA agent", including a statement in The New York Times.

Baird continued fighting for reproductive freedom and directed three non-profit clinics that are now closed due to constant 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.

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Video edited (and thumbnail) by invisible ninja

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