Where to Pass the Torch?
By MICHAEL WINERIP Published in the New York Times GRANITE CITY, Ill. WHEN Anne Baker graduated from Southern Illinois University in 1975, she was pleased to be hired as a birth control counselor for a Planned Parenthood clinic, though it was not her dream job. “I wanted to be an abortion counselor,” she recalled. “I wanted it so bad.” Ms. Baker was thrilled when the Supreme Court legalized abortion in its 1973 Roe v. Wade decision. “I remember going to rallies, and this was so long ago, instead of calling opponents pro-life, we called them ‘fetus supremacists.’ ” She had been raised by her Catholic divorced mother and her great-aunt. They had little money, and to put herself through college, she worked a year, saved, went to school for a year, then worked the next year. “I was so convinced that to stay independent, women needed abortion for a backup,” she said. “It was like a calling for me.” And so, the following year, in 1976, when a counseling job opened at the abortion clinic here, a 30-minute drive across the Mississippi River from her home in St. Louis, Ms. Baker grabbed it and never left, becoming the head of counseling at the Hope Clinic for Women. In that time, she estimates she has done abortion counseling for 25,000 women and a few girls, some as young as 11, others as old as 53. “It’s been my dream job,” she said. “I wanted to be standing by the side of someone who was making a decision that others would condemn her for, and support her and link arms and say, You’re a good person making a hard decision, and that’s what I’ve done for 33 years.” But here is the question: As Ms. Baker’s generation approaches retirement — women whose commitment to abortion was forged in the pre-Roe v. Wade days — will younger women take their places at the clinics?
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