1
Susan Hill at the Supreme Court: Reproductive Rights Advocacy in the Deep South
Remembered
Justine Orlovsky-Schnitzler
The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
History Honors Department
John Sweet, Thesis Advisor
Katherine Turk, Second Reader
Defended March 24, 2017
2
Introduction: “…But I Didn’t Think It Was Going to Happen.”
On a frigid day in January, 1973, the Supreme Court of the United States announced a
landmark decision: all existing state laws rendering abortion completely illegal were to be
overturned. The majority opinion held that the Constitution's First, Fourth, Ninth, and Fourteenth
Amendments protect an individual's "zone of privacy" against state laws—citing past cases that
ruled activities like marriage, contraception, and child rearing were covered by this implied
freedom from state interference. Thus, the official opinion of the Supreme Court was that "zone
of privacy" was "broad enough to encompass a woman's decision whether or not to terminate her
pregnancy.”1
As Susan Hill remembered, it was only minutes after the news broke that she received a
phone call from her friend, physician Sam Barr. “He told me to turn the radio on,” she recalled,
“‘Susan,’ he asked, ‘how do you feel about opening an abortion clinic with me?’”2 At the time,
Hill was a twenty-four-year-old social worker living and working in Miami. A native of Durham,
North Carolina, she obtained her undergraduate degree in social work from Meredith College in
Raleigh, North Carolina before completing postgraduate courses at the University of North
Carolina at Chapel Hill in sociology.3 In later depositions, she referred to her work in Brevard
County, Florida, from 1971 to January 1973, as “just hospital social work”—primarily acting as
a liaison between the local hospital and the county welfare office.4 It was here in Brevard that
McBride, Alex. “Landmark Cases: Roe v. Wade.” 2007.
<http://www.pbs.org/wnet/supremecourt/rights/landmark_roe.html>.
2
Schoen, Johanna. Abortion after Roe (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2015),
23.
3
Deposition of Susan Hill, taken 18th December 1985 (pgs. 4-5). Courtesy of the Susan Hill
Papers of the Rubenstein Collection, Duke Libraries.
4
Deposition of Susan Hill, taken 18th December 1985 (pgs. 4-5). Courtesy of the Susan Hill
Papers of the Rubenstein Collection, Duke Libraries.
1
3
she first encountered Barr, a practicing gynecologist with admitting privileges to the hospital in
question.
Throughout her tenure as the liaison for the welfare office, Hill saw first-hand the
struggles of women who felt unable to care for existing children, much less contemplate having
more. When her work brought into the hospital itself, she recalled conversing with Barr about the
reality of illegal abortion, usually in the context of those who died seeking his medical help too
late following attempts to self-abort. “I’d see them come in…and he could really talk
emotionally about it…so it wasn’t unusual to see.”5 These conversations eventually shifted to the
seemingly distant possibility of abortion being legalized, and what would change once that
occurred. “I talked to him because I loved social work, and he said, if this ever becomes
legalized, and I think it’s going to, would you be interested in working with me?”6 Hill
“fantasized” about the possibility of the procedure made legal and accessible, “but I didn’t think
it was going to happen.”7 Roe v. Wade made that casual promise a reality—and it took a mere
phone call to put gears in motion.
Within two weeks, Barr had opened the EPOC (Every Person’s Own Choice) clinic in
Winter Park, Florida, just outside of Orlando, with Susan Hill as acting director.8 “The new
clinic,” Schoen writes in Abortion After Roe, “opened its door to hundreds of women seeking
legal abortions from all across the southeastern United States.”9 A friendship between a social
5
Interview with Susan Hill by Johanna Schoen, 2009, in the Southern Oral History Program
Collection #4007, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University at North
Carolina at Chapel Hill.
6
Ibid.
7
Ibid.
8
Schoen, Johanna. Abortion after Roe (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2015),
23.
9
Ibid.
4
advocate and career physician had formed what would ultimately be both a springboard to action
and a launching pad to Hill’s personal career—which would withstand enormous social pressure
and legal upheaval over the years immediately following the Supreme Court decision.
This thesis is an examination of the monumental strength of abortion clinic owners in the
post-Roe v. Wade era. In particular, I have chosen to focus on the life and work of Susan Hill, a
native of Durham, N.C., and lifelong advocate for reproductive freedom. In 1986, Hill was
approached by Ellie Smeal of the National Organization for Women to join a burgeoning lawsuit
against the growing intrusion of anti-choice protestors at clinics nationwide. Hill signed on as a
key plaintiff and witness for the case, which would ultimately find itself before the Supreme
Court. The case, filed as NOW vs. Scheidler, argued under the RICO (Racketeer-Influenced
Corrupt Organizations) Act with Hill as a key plaintiff, marked a sharp departure from
previously legal strategies employed by reproductive rights organizations. I argue Hill’s
inclusion as a plaintiff determined the course of the case overall: her insight as a clinic owner
drove the argument from which NOW successfully charged Joseph Scheidler and associates with
racketeering in 1998.
In examining my thesis topic against major historiographical fields, I found two to be
most relevant to my subject: feminist historiography (an admittedly vast and multifaceted
heading) and legal historiography—specifically as it relates to the study of precedent in the
United States justice system.
The question of how to define historiographies and historical analysis as decidedly
feminist has been a seemingly long-term source of debate amongst historians attempting to
critically examine their work through a feminist lens. Feminism is multi-faceted, and more recent
feminist efforts in academia have focused on the importance of identity politics and intersecting
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backgrounds in forming feminist critiques. In writing my own thesis, I strove to be cognizant of
the various backgrounds, privileges, and personal biases of the people I documented: for
example, nearly all of the major players in my thesis are and were white, which certainly affected
their experiences while alive and working in the field of reproductive justice. In “Truth, Lies, and
Method: Revisiting Feminist Historiography,” Cheryl Glen notes that one the strongest
hindrances to feminist discourse has been the construction of a firm binary between truth and
subjectivity. For too long, she argues, prominent historians have behaved as if feminist (and other
“alternative” lens) are more subjective (and therefore more unreliable) than “traditional”
historical analysis.10 In reality, feminist historiography is an attempt to observe history through
an underrepresented vantage point—and is no more or less subjective than so called “traditional”
approaches.
As I researched my own thesis, centered on women’s issues and in direct connection to
feminist scholarship, I strove to continually interact with the discipline approaches put forth and
discussed in this and other texts in feminist historical roster—including the major text Feminism
Unfinished: A Short, Surprising History of American Women’s Movements, by Dorothy Sue
Cobble, Linda Gordon, and Astrid Henry. Feminism Unfinished is divided into three major
sections: the first, handling the women’s movement immediately following suffrage; the second,
the so-called liberation movement; and the third—an examination of feminism post-1990.11
Within these three time divisions, the authors contextualize and situate their highlighted players
amongst greater happenings: larger “politics, economics, and culture” events spanning from the
Glen, Cheryl. “Truth, Lies, and Method: Revisiting Feminist Historiography.” UNC Davis
Library Reserves. Accessed 28 September 2016.
11
Cobble, Dorothy Sue, Linda Gordon, and Astrid Henry. Feminism Unfinished: A Short,
Surprising History of American Women’s Movements (New York: Liveright Publishing
Corporation, 2014), pg. 13.
10
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Great Depression to the introduction of the World Wide Web.12 What makes the work presented
in Feminism Unfinished part of a greater feminist historiography, as discussed by Cheryl Glen, is
the commitment on the part of the authors to approach each major “outside” episode from the
perspective of the underrepresented: in this case, the feminists standing against the broader social
tide. To that end, I strove to align my own historical research with the methods employed by
Cobble, Gordon, and Henry, taking careful stock (to the best of my abilities) of the social climate
that existed during each documented shift in both Hill’s life and work. Feminism Unfinished is
necessarily broad in its subject matter: as a noted “concise” approach to the last hundred years of
feminism in the United States, the volume is, by default, non-comprehensive.13 The authors
focus on “illustrative individuals”—a term which here means women, some known and some
obscure, who best gave example of the broader themes the book attempts to trace. To this end,
my work fits squarely into this methodology: my emphasis on Susan Hill is a specific, narrowed
glimpse at an individual who best represented the argument I make overall. She is not
representative of every abortion provider nor reproductive rights activist, but for the sake of
brevity, she is an excellent stand-in.
Sara Dubow’s Ourselves Unborn served as an additional companion to my investigation
of Hill’s political understandings of abortion within a wider social conversation nationwide about
the concept of “right-to-life”. Dubow’s text argues that the way fetuses are discussed in our
wider public arena is the result of a complex, constantly shifting entanglement of religious
beliefs, personal identity, political manipulation, and assumptions of sex, gender, and
12
Cobble, Dorothy Sue, Linda Gordon, and Astrid Henry. Feminism Unfinished: A Short,
Surprising History of American Women’s Movements (New York: Liveright Publishing
Corporation, 2014), pg. 13.
13
Ibid.
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personhood.14 Dubow devotes a substantial portion of her research to the question of legal
personhood for fetuses and the American feminist response to such a declaration. Ultimately, her
argument divests from my own research interests (primarily by way of emphasizing the
theoretical verses the lived experiences of those who work in the realm of abortion healthcare).
Still, her work is an important primer that presents a more nuanced and investigative take on the
questions that must be addressed before abortion as a social and political act can be considered a
viable legal option in the United States.
The second major field of historiography I contended with is that of legal history. The
article “Recent Trends in Legal Historiography” by Robert W. Gordon, published by Yale Law
Press, attempts to shed light on the rapidly-shifting field of legal scholarship and historical
analysis, citing the rapidly changing legal discourse and divide in the US as reason to appreciate
the uneven nature of the field. The most important takeaway of the article, in relation to my
thesis specifically, is his meditation on the methodology of legal researchers and historians who
approach legal history as if it exists in a vacuum. Beyond the reality that law itself builds upon
precedent cases and evolving legal insight, the vacuum approach is incredibly short-sighted.
Such an understanding, Gordon writes, “led…to (the) conclusion…that the only materials one
needed to consult for the study of legal history were legal materials, the formal, internal products
of the legal system.”15 This is simply inaccurate—cases both major and minor must be
contextualized against social trends, political discourse, cultural differences, etc. As I evaluated
the legal struggles that define my thesis’ narrative, I approached each case with a sincere effort
14
Dubow, Sara. Ourselves Unborn: The History of the Fetus in Modern America (New York:
Oxford University Press, 2011).
15
Gordon, Robert W. “Recent Trends in Legal Historiography”. Yale University Press.
http://digitalcommons.law.yale.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2354&context=fss_papers.
8
to unravel the intersecting social facets that both influenced the outcome of the case and
populated the atmosphere around each. Legal historiographies, like those examined by Robert
Gordon, recognize the importance of social pressure on the shaping of our legal system. The law
does not exist independent of human experience, as much as we would like to believe it is an
impartial, rigid standard. For the purposes of my thesis, legal historiography gave me a lens
through which to evaluate my own discussion of legal cases. As I investigated the battles that
made reproductive rights a legal reality in the US, I was challenged to consistently search for the
full social and cultural story behind each victory.
Finally, I must make explicit mention of the continuing, comprehensive works of Dr.
Johanna Schoen in the fields of reproductive, oral, and legal history. Several of her books and
oral histories, including still-unpublished discussions with Susan Hill prior to her death, formed
the crux of my research materials. My work is intended as a direct build atop her investigations
into the individual lives of major reproductive rights activists. Like Dr. Schoen, I argue that it is
the inclusion of the stories of those most intimately involved in US abortion care that pushes
reproductive rights healthcare forward—whether in legal battles (as my thesis emphasizes) or
through increasingly wider social acceptance.
Overall, it is my sincere hope that readers of my work develop not only a more nuanced
understanding of the NOW vs. Scheidler case, but also critically consider the tireless work of
clinic owners, who make reproductive choice a reality. I am forever indebted to those who have
entrusted me with their research, their stories, and their passion for reproductive justice: this
thesis would not exist without them.
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“I remember fighting…in one board meeting and saying, “You can’t be afraid of women who are
having abortions or you’ll never be able to convince people that you’re telling them the truth.”
Susan Hill, Clinic Owner16
Chapter One
“It’s Like She Never Existed”: The Early Years of Legal Abortion
What would ultimately prove most striking about Hill’s beginnings in abortion care is the
relative ease with which she and Barr were able to navigate opening a clinic. This chapter will
demonstrate that working in reproductive rights, particularly abortion rights, became increasingly
difficult as years went by—when, theoretically, time having elapsed from Roe’s passage should
have made the process easier. While Roe certainly outlined clear boundaries of legality in terms
of the abortion procedure and stage of pregnancy, the decision inadvertently fostered leniency
toward invasive, disruptive counter-actions—such as picketing, the passage of “conscience
clauses”, and facility restriction for clinic ownership. The legal movement that led to the passage
of Roe vs. Wade in the United States can be credited to the rise of several social pressures and
conditions—most notably, the collaborative work of organized second-wave feminism and the
medical community at-large. The Roe decision asserted that privacy (as loosely outlined in the
Fourteenth Amendment) extended to decisions about pregnancy. The law almost immediately
was met with challenges—in lower court rulings and from fast-growing opposition groups,
largely independent of religious affiliation. This chapter will, therefore, catalogue major
challenges to reproductive rights that came after Roe and set the stage for NOW vs. Scheidler—
with particular emphasis on the evolving shift in the legal language of bodily autonomy postRoe. This chapter will also utilize the work of Hill, eventual plaintiff in NOW vs. Scheidler, as a
16
Interview with Susan Hill by Johanna Schoen, 2008, in the Southern Oral History Program
Collection #4007, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University at North
Carolina at Chapel Hill.
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lens through which to examine the post-Roe legal and social climate of the US, by situating her
involvement with the abortion rights movement and expounding upon her work as a clinic owner
in the South.
The Years Before Roe (1967-1973)
Writer Eleanor Cooney’s now-famous personal essay entitled “The Way It Was”
reflected on her struggle to obtain an illegal abortion in the early 60s, prior to Roe vs. Wade.17 In
detailing her own procedure, she attempts to paint a realistic portrait of the life of a woman
seeking abortion care before it was legally guaranteed—a shady web of unsterile instruments,
closed doors, and desperate compromises. For the first half of the twentieth century, abortion
laws were stagnant, with deaths from unsafe, “back alley” procedures swept under the category
of “unfortunate, unavoidable maternal death.”18 “Ironically,” Cooney writes, “it was the medical
profession, which had made abortion illegal in the first place, that started to speak out… Doctors
treating the desperately sick women who landed in hospitals….often had to futilely watch them
die, because the women had waited too long to get help—because they were confused and
terrified, because what they had done was ‘illegal’ and ‘immoral.’”19
Cooney cites an unnamed physician, writing in a collection of pre-Roe medical memoirs,
to summarize the state of reproductive healthcare before 1973:
One doctor's "awakening" is vividly described in The Worst of Times, a collection of
interviews with women, cops, coroners, and practitioners from the illegal abortion era. In
1948, when this doctor was an intern in a Pittsburgh hospital, a woman was admitted with
severe pelvic sepsis after a bad abortion…. Her death was so horrible that it made him, he
recalls, physically ill. He describes his anger, but says he didn't quite know with whom to
Cooney, Eleanor. “The Way It Was”, Mother Jones. September/October 2014 issue, 61.
Boston Women’s Health Book Collective. Our Bodies, Ourselves (New York: Simon and
Schuster, 2011), 65-69.
19
Cooney, Eleanor. “The Way It Was”, Mother Jones. September/October 2014 issue, 61.
17
18
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be angry. It took him another 20 years to understand that it was not the abortionist who
killed her—it was the legal system, the lawmakers who had forced her away from the
medical community, who "…killed her just as surely as if they had held the catheter or
the coat hanger or whatever. I'm still angry. It was all so unnecessary”.20
All so unnecessary is Cooney’s driving message: abortion care prior to Roe was scattered,
shameful, and largely out of reach, creating and perpetuating a societal atmosphere where legal
inaccessibility outright killed women. To end her piece, she mentions the words of another
physician, writing for the same anthology, regarding the immediate impact Roe had on the lives
of women. “The deaths stopped overnight in 1973”, he wrote, “and that…ought to tell people
something about keeping abortion legal.”21
Between 1967 and 1973, fourteen different states in the US reformed or outright repealed
previously held laws restricting the termination of pregnancy.22 According to the Guttmacher
Institute, in 1972, a little more than 100,000 women left their home states to abort pregnancies in
New York City. More than 50,000 traveled over 500 miles to obtain said abortion in New York,
and nearly 7,000 women traveled more than 1,000 miles for the procedure.23 Thus, even if there
were places in the United States where the procedure was not illegal, it could hardly be deemed
accessible.
Susan Hill remembered a peer at Meredith College in Raleigh who had sought an illegal
abortion out of the state, traveling nearly 100 miles to Cheraw, South Carolina.24 When she
Cooney, Eleanor. “The Way It Was”, Mother Jones. September/October 2014 issue, 61.
Ibid.
22
Boston Women’s Health Book Collective. Our Bodies, Ourselves (New York: Simon and
Schuster, 2011), 65-69.
23
Gold, Rachel Benson. “Lessons From Before Roe: Will Past Be Prologue?” 1 March 2003.
<https://www.guttmacher.org/about/gpr/2003/03/lessons-roe-will-past-be-prologue>.
24
Schoen, Johanna. Abortion after Roe (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2015),
23.
20
21
12
returned to school, in the middle of the night, she was suffering from a severe infection and close
to death. “We never saw her again,” Hill recalled. “They treated her and she left and we never
saw her again. And for weeks, no one would tell us what had happened to her. She just
disappeared once they knew what she’d done. It’s like she never existed.”25 Hill’s observation of
illegal abortion would only serve to further her desire to see the procedure fully legalized.
According to Johanna Schoen, a number of factors “converged” in the late 1960s to set
the stage for abortion reform.26 Most prominently was the reality of illegal procedures. “The
specter of women dying as a result of illegal abortions,” Schoen writes in Abortion After Roe,
“propelled activists who hoped to protect the lives of women by making therapeutic abortions
more accessible.”27 By the time Roe was on the table, young feminist advocates like Hill were
eager to see freedom of choice and safety in said choice enshrined in American legal policy. Just
how far Roe would go in affirming the secure right to an abortion, however, remained to be seen.
When Hill received Barr’s phone call regarding the opening of a clinic, only the bare
bones of the case outcome were widely known: abortion was legal in the United States, with
existing laws banning the procedure deemed illegal. Beyond this important base, the reality of
what Roe did not explicitly address was not immediately evident to those in reproductive rights
circles, like Hill. Only as time progressed past the ruling would those working to provide
abortion services be forced to reckon with the nuances of the Supreme Court decision.
What Roe Said, and What It Didn’t
25
Schoen, Johanna. Abortion after Roe (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2015),
23.
26
Ibid.
27
Ibid.
13
While the Roe v. Wade ruling did offer an affirmative nod by the Supreme Court in the
interest in bodily autonomy, the specifications were left intentionally broad, open to the
interpretation of the states. Bodily autonomy in this context refers to the ultimate decision of the
Court to legally solidify choice during the earliest stages of pregnancy. However, the ruling was
not so much a celebration of a fundamental right of each woman to determine when she wants to
become a mother, as it was an attempt to balance the interests of the state in protecting both the
mother’s health and the life of fetus.
According to the text of the decision, for procedures taking place during the first
trimester (approximately the first twelve weeks of pregnancy),28 “the abortion decision and its
effectuation must be left to the medical judgment of the pregnant woman's attending
physician.”29 For procedures taking place during the second trimester (approximately the
thirteenth to the twenty-sixth weeks of pregnancy)30 “…the State, in promoting its interest in the
health of the mother, may, if it chooses, regulate the abortion procedure in ways that are
reasonably related to maternal health.”31 Finally, for procedures performed in the third trimester
(from the twenty-seventh to the fortieth week of pregnancy),32 “the State, in promoting its
interest in the potentiality of human life, may, if it chooses, regulate, and even proscribe,
abortion except where necessary, in appropriate medical judgment, for the preservation of the
28
Peggy Simkin, et al., Pregnancy, Childbirth, and the Newborn: The Complete Guide. (New
York: Meadowbrook Publishing, 2016), 43-45.
29
Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113 (1973).
<https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/410/113>.
30
Peggy Simkin, et al., Pregnancy, Childbirth, and the Newborn: The Complete Guide. (New
York: Meadowbrook Publishing, 2016), 43-45.
31
Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113 (1973).
<https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/410/113>.
32
Peggy Simkin, et al., Pregnancy, Childbirth, and the Newborn: The Complete Guide. (New
York: Meadowbrook Publishing, 2016), 43-45.
14
life or health of the mother.”33 Herein lies a crucial weakness (in the interest of abortion
providers) of the Roe ruling: beyond the first trimester, individual states retained a legal right to
enact restrictions and outright bans on the type of procedures performed. Furthermore, Roe did
not lay significant blueprints for safeguards against the enacting of laws that affected abortion
accessibility in indirect ways—such as religious exemptions, facility restrictions (“TRAP” laws)
and the allowance of picketing and other counter-choice actions. All of these listed “exceptions”
to the ruling allowed de facto inaccessibility of abortion in the first trimester—which was meant,
under Roe, to be an absolute. “If the state bars you from exercising a constitutional right”, wrote
Cecile Richards (elected president of Planned Parenthood in 2006), “do you really have that
constitutional right at all?”34
Roe’s reliance on the constitutional interpretation and assumption of bodily privacy is
crucial for comparison to 1994’s NOW vs. Scheidler—which will be discussed at length in later
chapters of this thesis. Privacy is not an explicitly addressed right of the U.S Constitution.
However, in 1965, the Supreme Court ruled in Griswold v. Connecticut that assumed
“penumbras” (group of rights derived from the Bill, not stated outright) were enough to
encompass protection by the State of individual privacy relating to contraception use between
married individuals.35 This ruling overturned the so-called “Comstock Laws”— “moral”
legislations existing at the time of Griswold in over 30 states to prevent the movement of
“immoral” merchandise—such as pessaries, male contraceptive devices, and even herbal
33
Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113 (1973).
<https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/410/113>.
34
Richards, Cecile. “If You Can’t Exercise Your Right to Safe, Legal Abortion, Do You Have
That Right at All?” 1 March 2016. Washington Post.
35
Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113 (1973).
<https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/410/113>.
15
supplements thought to inhibit or slow conception.36 In 1936, Margaret Sanger (the eventual
founder of Planned Parenthood) challenged the federal prohibition of transporting contraceptives
across state lines.37
The majority opinion’s interpretation of de facto privacy protection as applicable to
marital behavior wedged open a door previously thought impossible to open: if the medical
necessities of marital relations between consenting adults were protected from government
interference, was that interpretation wide enough to encompass medical procedures resulting
from such relations? Sarah Weddington and Linda Coffee, both attorneys in Texas seeking to
challenge abortion restrictions, certainly felt so. At the time, Texas state law prohibited abortion
save for the case of incest and rape. In June of 1969, a young, unmarried Texas woman, seeking
to terminate her pregnancy and unable to do so legally, was referred to the pair of lawyers, who
filed suit against the United States District Court for the Northern District of Texas.38 The
unmarried plaintiff (who gave birth and placed the child up for adoption before the case reached
the Supreme Court) was given the anonymous moniker Jane Roe to protect her identity. The
defendant, Dallas County District Attorney Henry Wade, represented the State of Texas. The
case slowly made its way through district court, initially reaching the Supreme Court docket on
appeal in 1970.39 Initial arguments before the Court produced a tentative majority in favor of
overturning the oppressive Texas law, but with dissenting opinions regarding on what grounds
UNC-TV, PBS. “People & Events: Anthony Comstock’s ‘Chasity Laws’”.
<http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/pill/peopleevents/e_comstock.html>.
37
Ibid.
38
Planned Parenthood. “Roe v. Wade: It’s History and Impact”.
<https://www.plannedparenthood.org/files/3013/9611/5870/Abortion_Roe_History.pdf>.
39
Planned Parenthood. “Roe v. Wade: It’s (sic) History and Impact”.
<https://www.plannedparenthood.org/files/3013/9611/5870/Abortion_Roe_History.pdf>.
36
16
the law was illegal.40 Thus, Roe was reargued before the Court on October 11, 1972. In the
recess between oral arguments and the announcement of the decision on January 22, 1973,
Supreme Court Justice Harry Blackmun wrote the majority opinion, centered on two major
pillars that would become foundational for abortion law in the United States from that point
forward. These pillars were as follows: 1) the right to privacy, with the explicit rejection of a
fetal “right to life” argument, prior to the point of viability, and 2) “moot-ness”—that is, prior to
the Roe decision, the case would have been voided and declared moot, given that the plaintiff
gave birth to the child in the interim between the filing and ultimate Court decision. In this case,
the majority opinion rejected the idea that the plaintiff had to benefit directly from the outcome
of the ruling to retain legal standing and viability. The Court saw Jane Roe’s predicament as
applicable to American women on the whole—thus, the case was exempt from the illegality of
“advisory opinions.”41 The minority opinion, held by only two justices, remained convinced that
Jane Roe’s delivery of a live baby negated her standing as a legitimate plaintiff. This, coupled
with disagreement regarding the interpretation and inferring of privacy as a constitutional right,
formed the basis of their minority dissent. This remains a critical point: while there was dissent
among Supreme Court justices over the decision, the primary causation of splitting opinion was
not in regard to the potential personhood of a fetus, but rather the limits of legal privacy and
viability of the legal process as it related to the establishment of a valid plaintiff.
While the expansion of moot decision capabilities certainly has impacted cases beyond
Roe (on issues wholly unrelated to reproductive healthcare) it is the invocation of privacy that
Planned Parenthood. “Roe v. Wade: It’s (sic) History and Impact”.
<https://www.plannedparenthood.org/files/3013/9611/5870/Abortion_Roe_History.pdf>.
41
Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113 (1973).
<https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/410/113>.
40
17
has endured—and set the baseline from which the Constitutional guarantee of reproductive rights
in the United States began. The majority opinion, spearheaded and written by Blackmun,
summarized thusly: “The right to privacy is broad enough to encompass a woman's decision
whether or not to terminate her pregnancy.”42 The statement was simple, but a powerful one.
It has been consistently argued by moderate politicians that so long as Roe is in place,
there exists no piece of legislation or policy implemented that could eradicate the damage of
“freedom of choice.”43 To counter this debate, more liberal politicians and advocates (like Susan
Hill) have argued since Roe’s inception that the decision represents but a cornerstone. Roe left
(even in its firmness of the first trimester right-to-abort) no guidelines for how to prevent both
subtle and overt limitations on that supposed guarantee. As the sun set on January 22, 1973,
reproductive rights advocates faced entirely new challenges: navigating a political climate
irrevocably altered by the provocations of Roe. What remained to be seen was just how the
legality of abortion would stand against guaranteed future challenges to its accessibility, both at
the individual state and federal level.
Roe in Practice
“Conscience-Based” Exemptions
Six months after Roe was decided, President Nixon signed into law the Health Programs
Extension Act, which on paper extended over a dozen public health programs.44 Included in the
42
Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113 (1973).
<https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/410/113>.
43
Gorney, Cynthia. Articles of Faith: Frontline History of the Abortion Wars (1998), 8. New
York: Touchstone Publishing.
44
Dubow, Sara. (2015). "A constitutional right rendered utterly meaningless": Religious
exemptions and reproductive politics, 1973-2014. Journal of Policy History: JPH, 27(1),
1-35.
18
fine print, however, was a clause allowing federally-funded medical personnel, clinics, and
hospitals to refuse abortion services to patients—ostensibly the first nail in the coffin to
undermine Roe.45 “By the end of 1974,” wrote Sara Dubow, a reproductive rights historian,
“twenty-eight states had passed similar conscience clauses.”46
“Including moral conviction (clauses) would greatly expand the number of individuals
and hospitals that could refuse to perform abortions,”47 Dubow noted, expressing the fears of
reproductive rights advocates that Roe’s passage was unsteady. The Hyde Amendment, passed in
1977, concretely banned the use of Medicaid funds for abortion-related services—though
sterilization and birth control remained covered as viable medical necessities.48 Initially, the
Hyde Amendment passed with the sole exception of its statutes being a case involving
endangerment of the life of the mother.49 In the 1978 fiscal year, Hyde was renewed with
exceptions for rape and incest, in addition to endangerment of the life of the mother.50 Still, the
negative effects were widely felt: in 1977, with the Hyde Amendment in effect, “abortions
financed by federal Medicaid funds dropped from about 300,000 per year to a few thousand.”51
Susan Hill’s patients certainly felt the effects of conscience clause exemptions and the
Hyde Amendment. When asked to recall memorable patients, she hesitated before beginning:
“The family in the car. And it was a hundred degrees…because it was July in Mississippi…It
45
Dubow, Sara. (2015). "A constitutional right rendered utterly meaningless": Religious
exemptions and reproductive politics, 1973-2014. Journal of Policy History: JPH, 27(1),
1-35.
46
Ibid.
47
Ibid.
48
ACLU.org. “Access Denied: Origins of the Hyde Amendment and Other Restrictions on
Public Funding for Abortion.” <https://www.aclu.org/other/access-denied-origins-hydeamendment-and-other-restrictions-public-funding-abortion>.
49
Ibid.
50
Ibid.
51
Ibid.
19
was one of their daughters. And we found out later, the mother told us that it was uncle who had
raped (sic), had been continually abusing her until she got pregnant…. And I said, ‘What are
doing in your car? Have you been waiting long?’, ‘Oh, Ms. Susan, we slept in the car. We
didn’t have enough money for a room.’”52 The dire financial situation of the family, coupled
with the understanding that the pregnant girl was both forced into her pregnancy and underage,
both amazed and devastated Hill. She continued in the same interview, “…I went, ‘Seven of you
slept in the car in a hundred degrees?’ And she went, ‘Yes, ma’am. It wasn’t too bad.’ I mean
they were so passive. And I was sitting there going, ‘This is going to be miserable’ …. And I
always felt like it wasn’t about abortion. It wasn’t about abortion at all. I said, ‘I want to give
these women an option or a vision into doing something more with their lives because they’re
already poor. What option have they ever seen? There’s not one.’ So we tried as much as we
can to get them involved in anything else we could that would help get them out of that cycle.”53
Without the ability to access assistive funds for the procedure, Hill could only speculate as to
how the family she described above was able to finance the abortion. While an upsetting and less
common example of a patient seeking care at one of her clinics, the story of the family in the car
nonetheless highlights how badly “conscience-based” objections to abortion (translated into
policy) affected those who needed the most assistance. Activists like Hill felt that a family
already struggling to make ends meet should not be forced to sleep in their car, forgoing food
and other basic necessities, to access medical care protected under the Constitution.
52
Interview with Susan Hill by Johanna Schoen, 2008, in the Southern Oral History Program
Collection #4007, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University at North
Carolina at Chapel Hill.
53
Ibid.
20
Facility Restrictions
As recently as June 27th, 2016, the Supreme Court ruled that the state of Texas’ House
Bill 2 was unconstitutional—according to both Roe and 1992’s Planned Parenthood vs. Casey.54
The ruling—filed as Whole Women’s Health vs. Hellerstedt—challenged several decades’ worth
of so-called TRAP laws: Targeted Regulations of Abortion Providers.55 That it took until 2016
for these laws, implemented in various forms in states across the county, to be formally
challenged and overturned before the Supreme Court is a testament to the insidious nature of this
type of legislation. TRAP laws have generally existed, in one form or another since Roe, as ways
to regulate facilities that provide abortions in such a way that clinics are forced to close. Since
these laws do not explicitly address the actual abortion procedure itself, they have flown virtually
uncontested (until Hellerstedt) through many conservative state legislatures, beginning as early
as the first few years following Roe’s ruling.
Roe was a shock to many conservative legislators. Abortion opponents rallied to attempt
wide-scale federal action, which was largely unsuccessful (legislation like the Hyde Amendment,
while polarizing and hugely detrimental to women relying on Medicaid, did not affect Roe’s
constitutionality). Those involved in the fight against the newly christened era of abortion rights
scrambled to exploit the caveats and potential loopholes of the ruling. Mary Ziegler, a law
professor at Florida State University, refers to the political strategy adopted shortly after Roe’s
passage (continuing through Hellerstedt, and, in many states, still ongoing) as
Planned Parenthood Action Fund. “Whole Woman’s Health vs. Hellerstedt.” 2016.
<https://www.plannedparenthoodaction.org/issues/abortion/whole-womans-health-vhellerstedt>.
55
Ibid.
54
21
“incrementalism.”56 “The idea”, she wrote in her 2015 text, After Roe: The Lost History of the
Abortion Debate, “was to chip away at abortion rights until Roe was so incoherent and so riddled
with holes that courts would just finally get rid of it.”57
In the first decade of abortion legality, clinic owners most acutely felt discrimination
connected to the fine-print requirements of running a functioning, legal facility at the local and
state level. For Susan Hill, it generally began as soon as the paperwork to purchase land or
building space was filed. In 1980, she located an old house in Fargo, North Dakota that would be
suitable for patient care. She attempted to be discreet—when filing documents with the city, she
avoided stating the explicit purpose of her future health clinic. But after interviewing potential
medical staff, word got around that an abortion clinic would be opening in the city. During the
public hearing for zoning approval, hundreds of anti-abortion protestors swamped the court
building.58 City commissioners suspended Hill’s permit, on shaky grounds of the potential of the
proposed clinic to cause “public unrest.”59 It was only after Susan Hill explicitly threatened a
lawsuit that city commissioners moved forward with the building permit.60
Similarly, in Milwaukee, there was the question of lease trouble. Susan Hill recalled:
“You know, I never thought we couldn’t win it (legal battles over leases), any of them, ever,
because I was crazy, the eternal optimist. I knew enough about the legal system to be
dangerous… If we had the patience, we could get through it because there were just certain
Martin, Nina. “The Supreme Court Decision That Made a Mess of Abortion Rights.” 29
February 2016. <http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2016/02/supreme-court-decisionmess-abortion-rights>.
57
Ziegler, Mary. After Roe: The Lost History of the Abortion Debate (Cambridge: Harvard
University Press, 2015), 37.
58
Schoen, Johanna. Abortion after Roe (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2015),
168.
59
Ibid.
60
Ibid.
56
22
constitutional rights that they were not doing and they were not honoring.”61 By this point in her
career, Hill’s experience with legal entanglement had made her a savvy opponent to those who
would attempt to take advantage of naiveté. The question of opening clinics for Hill, then,
became less about legal intelligence and more about financial feasibility. She continued in the
same interview, “…I didn’t know if we could financially do it or if we could keep a staff
together long enough to go through it. They [pro-lifers who worked in local ordinances] did get
one of the leases negated. I had to go to the landlord, who turned out to be a good guy. He said,
‘They’ve gone to all the tenants and threatened to boycott them…I just can’t rent it.’ And I said,
‘Well, we’ve already signed the lease, and unless you find us another building, we’re going to
have to sue you. And I don’t want to do that, but…we’re getting moved out of the other
building.’ And so he did…. I said, ‘Well we were looking at a building down on this street.”
Not thinking that he would go for it. He called me the next day and he said, ‘I’ve bought that
building. Do you want to move in?’”62
Opening an abortion clinic required a complex, burdensome balancing act between city
commissioners and ordinances, public opinion (primarily in regards to how active protestors
were in any given city), and state restrictions. While “on the books” TRAP laws like those struck
down in Hellerstedt did not gain traction until the late 1980s and 1990s, the early years post-Roe
still required clinic owners to jump through hoops in order to open their constitutionally valid
health care facilities.
61
Interview with Susan Hill by Johanna Schoen, 2008, in the Southern Oral History Program
Collection #4007, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University at North
Carolina at Chapel Hill.
62
Ibid.
23
“Uninhibited Opinions”—Picketing as a Social and Political Strategy
No challenge to abortion’s legality in the United States has been as vocal or visible as
picketing—a tactic employed by a wide-range of anti-abortion activists and lay citizens. It began
the day Roe’s decision was handed down to the media on the steps of the Supreme Court.
Protestors waited outside the building, to hear the outcome of a case that could, in their eyes,
legalize murder on a wide-scale.63 Joseph Scheidler, the eventual defendant in the 1994 Supreme
Court case NOW vs. Scheidler (discussed at length in later chapters of this thesis) argued
following the ruling, “God is not mocked. God did not accept Roe v. Wade…He came first, and
He has His laws…And when you disobey God’s laws, you’re in big trouble.”64 This type of
sentiment—that pro-life groups were part of a larger purpose—guided the hands of those
committed to “on the ground” activism. It was not enough for people like Joseph Scheidler to
wait for legal process to further “incrementalism”—in order to change the opinions of the courts,
they had to first change the opinions of the public. More pressingly, anti-abortion activists felt
obligated to attempt to prevent the procedure, often through methods straddling a hazy line
between outright vandalism and harassment, and free speech and expression.
Within a few months of the decision, the National Right to Life was officially
incorporated as a 501(c) (4) organization, consolidating earlier, smaller groups.65 Frantic to
increase their presence, those involved in the so-called pro-life cause began to make waves the
63
Interview with Susan Hill by Johanna Schoen, 2008, in the Southern Oral History Program
Collection #4007, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University at North
Carolina at Chapel Hill.
64
Steiner, Mark Allen. The Rhetoric of Operation Rescue (New York: T&T Clark Press, 2006),
86.
65
Rovner, Julie. “Roe v. Wade Turns 40, But the Abortion Debate is Even Older.” 22 January
2013. NPR. <http://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2013/01/22/169637288/roe-vwade-turns-40-but-abortion-debate-is-evenolder;%20http://www.nrlc.org/abortion/history/>.
24
only way that seemed logical: protesting the clinics now legally opening nationwide. “Once
clinics opened,” writes Johanna Schoen, “protestors took advantage of the growing body of
visual and narrative materials depicting abortion in increasingly gruesome ways and used the
material to ‘educate’ abortion patients about what they saw as the realities of abortion.”66 In
discussing the earliest efforts of protestors, Dallas A. Blanchard describes their tactics thusly:
“There seemed to be the assumption among them…that reform or repeal (Roe v. Wade) had been
enacted only because legislators and the public just did not understand the…fully human status
of the fetus.”67
Susan Hill’s clinics (like nearly all clinics opening across the country) were immediately
the target of extensive picketing. In a conversational interview, she noted the extent to which her
clinics were “invaded” on a regular basis.68 “They would come in as patients. They would go to
the back of the building. They would destroy all the equipment. They would chain themselves
to OR (operating room) tables…you only need to be invaded like that a few times to not trust
anybody and to be always wary of who you’re dealing with. It’s a hell of a way to work.”69 In
her 1994 deposition during the NOW vs. Scheidler trial, she recounted decades-worth of
harassment at the hands of both unaffiliated, individual protestors and those affiliated with wellknown pro-life activists, including Joseph Scheidler. “There were always windows broken,” she
testified in the documents, “glass broken in the building itself, those types of vandalism…but
66
Schoen, Johanna. Abortion after Roe (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2015),
23.
67
Blanchard, Dallas A. The Anti-Abortion Movement (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1996), 4.
68
Interview with Susan Hill by Johanna Schoen, 2008, in the Southern Oral History Program
Collection #4007, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University at North
Carolina at Chapel Hill.
69
Ibid.
25
that was an ongoing situation.”70 When questioned as to whether she and her employees at the
clinics regularly contacted law enforcement or pressed charges against these protestors, Hill
responded, “It depended on how—quite honestly, it depended on how serious they were and
what the response of the police had been in previous cases…generally, if they weren’t very
interested in the vandalism, after a while we stopped reporting it because it was too frustrating;
there was no cooperation.”71
Even the protestors who did not commit outright acts of vandalism still danced around
the unclear line between free speech and hate speech in the context of abortion. Outside of Hill’s
Fort Wayne clinic, opened in 1977, protestors regularly approached entering patients,
brandishing graphic, bloodied imagery and shouting, “Are you going to kill your baby?!”72
Elbows and shoulders of patients were grabbed by moaning agitators, amongst cries of “Did you
know that Hitler started out that way?”73
McCoy Faulkner, longtime bodyguard and friend of Susan Hill remembers that
harassment by protestors extended to clinic staff, too. “The protestors knew us by name…you
know, when I would get to work, I’d hear ‘here comes McCoy.’ Sometimes they’d leave me be.
Sometimes I’d hear, ‘baby killer.’ There was a confrontation every single day.”74 Though
Faulkner was certainly the subject of taunts and jeers, Hill and the medical staff employed at
each of her clinics received the bulk of vitriol. The behavior that would later provide the
70
Deposition of Susan Hill, taken 18th December 1985 (pg. 1819) Courtesy of the Susan Hill
Papers of the Rubenstein Collection, Duke Libraries.
71
Ibid, pg. 1820.
72
Schoen, Johanna. Abortion after Roe (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2015),
163.
73
Ibid.
74
Interview with McCoy Faulkner by Justine Orlovsky-Schnitzler, 2016, in the Southern Oral
History Program Collection #4007, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library,
University at North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
26
foundation of the NOW v. Scheidler case began as early as the early 1980s, peaking toward the
end of the decade as the major lawsuit came to fruition. In her later deposition for Scheidler, Hill
would be forced to qualify how exactly statements by protestors like, “We know where you are,
we know where you live, and we’re coming to get you” made her fear for her life and the safety
of her staff.75 In Abortion After Roe, Johanna Schoen writes, “Picketers harassed the clinic
staff…they shouted, ‘killers for hire’, ‘owners of a baby death chamber’ whenever staff entered
the clinic and made anonymous phone calls to the private homes of staff.”76 On par with the
statements Hill recounted in her deposition, she was threatened by an anonymous caller shortly
after opening the Fort Wayne, Indiana clinic thusly: “You will be taken care of…we will run
your doctors and businesses out of town.”77
On January 15th, 1979, Fort Wayne Women’s Health Organization (Hill’s clinic) filed a
lawsuit in U.S District Court against Nurses Concerned for Life, a frequent picketing group, and
several individual defendants—“one of the first lawsuits in the country against anti-abortion
protestors.”78 Later that year, on August 11, 1979, Hill’s Fort Wayne clinic received its first
bomb threat—coupled with the arrival of Joseph Scheidler, by now famous for his picketing of
abortion clinics.79 “If we are going to be sued for walking out front,” he bellowed (presumably in
reference to the lawsuit filed earlier in the year), “we may as well go in and chain ourselves to
the tables.”80 Johanna Schoen’s account of the chaos of August 11th culminates in the arrival of
75
Deposition of Susan Hill, taken 18th December 1985 (pg. 1860) Courtesy of the Susan Hill
Papers of the Rubenstein Collection, Duke Libraries.
76
Schoen, Johanna. Abortion after Roe (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2015)
163.
77
Ibid.
78
Ibid.
79
Ibid.
80
Ibid.
27
local law enforcement in regards to the bomb threat. “As patients, relatives, and staff emerged
from the front and back doors, picketers blocked the way…with nowhere else to go…they were
led to a park across the street.”81 They were “surrounded by protestors.”82 Hill recalled to
Schoen, as “the city of Fort Wayne refused to dispatch police.”83 Near-constant embattlement
with protestors made Hill’s day-to-day work hellish. Demonstrations were “dramatic
performances”, with picketers “accost(ing) women entering abortion clinics, block(ing) their
access, confront(ing) them physically, follow(ing) them, trac(ing) license plate numbers,
call(ing) their homes…pour(ing) glue in the front door locks…and mak(ing) threatening phone
calls.”84 Minor lawsuits (such as FWWO vs. Concerned Nursing Students for Life), which formed
the foundation of NOW vs. Scheidler, were built on such infractions.
Clearly, clinic picketing was no casual nuisance. Owners and pro-choice activists like
Susan Hill were forced to contend with a constant barrage of aggression, often treading into
territory that to the targets like outright threats of violence—but often were treated as legally
murky by unsympathetic courts. The impacts of picketing (and legal inquiry into its role in
undermining Roe’s constitutional guarantees) would be examined in full under NOW vs.
Scheidler. Until such a wide-scale legal investigation was filed, however, clinic picketing
remained a veritable whack-a-mole in terms of challenging the actions of protestors.
81
Schoen, Johanna. Abortion after Roe (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2015)
163.
82
Interview with Susan Hill by Johanna Schoen, 2009, in the Southern Oral History Program
Collection #4007, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University at North
Carolina at Chapel Hill.
83
Schoen, Johanna. Abortion after Roe (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2015),
165.
84
Ibid, 172.
28
Conclusion
Roe v. Wade changed the face of reproductive rights in the United States irrevocably. The
reality of the ruling, however, meant that Roe came with weaknesses: weaknesses that would be
largely widened and exploited, rather than closed, in the immediate aftermath of its passage.
Without framework to combat actions and additional legislation that made abortion difficult or
outright impossible to access during the time frame when it was constitutionally protected, clinic
owners like Susan Hill were forced to reckon with the realities of so-called “morality clauses”,
hostile facility management at the hands of local and state councils, and aggressive picketing.
These oppressive factors combined to prove Roe was only the beginning of the fight for
unencumbered healthcare access—and the largest legal battles were still to come. Susan Hill
would soon begin to seek partnerships with larger feminist coalitions, such as the National
Organization for Women (NOW), in pursuit of legal action. Inch by inch, Hill and her associates
staked their ground against encroaching anti-choice action, in the hopes of cementing Roe’s
promise to protect abortion as a fundamental, Constitutional right.
29
Well, I think I told you one time, Ron Fitzsimmons called me, and he was with a bunch of
providers…. and he said, “Well, we were talking and we’re wondering, haven’t you had a time
when you doubted what you were doing?” And I went, “No, actually, I never have.” And he
said, “Oh, come on. Not even one minute?” I said, “I’ve never thought about it. I’ve thought
about the fact that I like what I do. I think I’m helping people.85
Chapter Two
“…Whatever happened to the shit-kicking, street fighting NOW?”: The Formation of the
Lawsuit, 1980-1987
The first time McCoy Faulkner heard of an organization called Planned Parenthood, it
was after a particularly rough week of enduring anti-choice protest. By joining forces with Susan
Hill’s Raleigh Women’s Clinic in 1982, he had outed his political preferences, positioning his
security company’s off-site headquarters from the clinic as a vulnerable target for ongoing
picketing. After a close encounter with a particularly virulent protestor, he arrived at work the
next day to find a gift basket sent “in solidarity” from Planned Parenthood’s national
headquarters.86 “I asked Susan what Planned Parenthood was—I knew vaguely they were in the
same business—but she said, you know, they were trying to be a national chain of abortion
providers.”87 While this generous gift “humbled” Faulkner, it also stirred up some ambivalence
about whether this national organization could truly comprehend or support his grassroots
efforts. His colleagues agreed. “There was an edge to Susan’s engagement with them. We were
out on the front lines, you know, and these folks sent this from the national office—they weren’t
in the day to day. No disrespect, of course, Planned Parenthood is huge—but Susan had this edge
85
Interview with Susan Hill by Johanna Schoen, 2009, in the Southern Oral History Program
Collection #4007, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University at North Carolina
at Chapel Hill.
86
Interview with McCoy Faulkner by Justine Orlovsky-Schnitzler, 2016, in the Southern Oral
History Program Collection #4007, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University at
North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
87
Ibid.
30
of frustration with them...I guess it came down to politics.”88 These “politics” of feminist
organizations dealing both directly and indirectly with abortion rights would prove to be one of
the more confusing and disheartening aspects of advocacy.
McCoy Faulker recalled that Susan frequently struggled to understand why groups with
the same ultimate goal—the preservation and expansion of reproductive rights, especially
abortion access—suffered at the hands of local vs. national chapter division. “Women’s groups,”
he said, “were all competing for the same dialogue. But Susan always thought there had to be a
way to get them all together, like a UN or NATO for feminism.”89 Faulkner’s recollections of
Hill’s desires are understandably limited by the narrowness of an individual perspective: multiple
modern feminist historians in fact argue that organizations such as NOW existed, in many ways,
for exactly such a purpose as Hill imagined. Indeed, the history of the organization as told on its
own national website describes the hierarchy of the organization being structured around satellite
and charter groups from the get-go.90 Still, Hill’s critiques of the national chapters of major
feminist groups were not entirely without merit. “Planned Parenthood and NOW and the
Feminist Majority—they were all competing for the same dollars,” Faulkner argued, “It just
wasn’t a group effort. But she spoke a lot—and she would tell me this a lot—that she wanted to
be the one to get them together. It didn’t happen, but of anyone I ever met, she would have been
the one. She cared.”91 Hill’s frustrations with what she and her associates perceived as major
88
Interview with McCoy Faulkner by Justine Orlovsky-Schnitzler, 2016, in the Southern Oral
History Program Collection #4007, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University at
North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
89
Ibid.
90
“Founding: Setting the Stage.” NOW.org. July 2006; July 2011.
<http://now.org/about/history/founding-2/>
91
Interview with McCoy Faulkner by Justine Orlovsky-Schnitzler, 2016, in the Southern Oral
History Program Collection #4007, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University at
North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
31
social and political disconnect between national and local branches of NOW, the Feminist
Majority, Planned Parenthood, and local abortion clinics was a point of confusion at best and
outright frustration at worst.
Hill’s method of engagement with anti-choice activists was direct and combative—and
remained so throughout her career. This put her in direct opposition to the wishes of several
prominent NOW officers whom she perceived as hitting back too softly. “With the NOW
people… I mean I don’t need to belabor the point, but it’s just frustrating. As an example, I
called an old friend recently—Robin Davis. She used to be the state director of NOW for years.
And I went, “What the hell is going on with you all?” She said, “I figured I’d hear from you.”
And I said, “Well, whatever happened to the shit-kicking, street fighting NOW that I knew and
loved?”92 Her displeasure stemmed primarily from her belief that the organization had evolved
into a sanitized, palatable shadow of its original mission. Hill continued on:
I said, “Where are you all?” And she said, “Well, we’re trying to be diversified and be
more diverse, and that means we have to…” and she trailed off. She wanted to say, “we
have to protect everybody’s feelings.” And I went, “Wasn’t that against the NOW
mission, to please everybody? Are you all just going to ruin NOW?” And she said,
“Well, that’s just the way that they want to run it now.” And I just said, “Well, that’s
really disheartening.”93
On the issue of abortion, there is both a clear dichotomy between liberal and conservative
approaches (largely outside the American political parties) and simultaneously a wide swath of
shaded support, falling across a wide spectrum of personal beliefs regarding abortion. Hill was
never one to shy away from conflict, something she reiterated to prove her point in the same
92
Interview with Susan Hill by Johanna Schoen, 2009, in the Southern Oral History Program
Collection #4007, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University at North Carolina
at Chapel Hill.
93
Ibid.
32
interview: “It was really disheartening because that’s a Planned Parenthood position, that’s a
NARAL position, and everybody... it’s like all politics. Everybody wants safety. Nobody wants
to get out on the edge and do anything. I couldn’t promise I wouldn’t get out on the edge
again.”94 For Hill, there existed a perpetual division amongst feminist groups over the proper
approach to attracting supporters.
In the years between the establishment of Roe v. Wade and being approached as a
plaintiff for the eventual Scheidler case, Hill’s relationship to the National Organization for
Women and other similar feminist organizations grew both positively and negatively—that is,
while she forged valuable connections with major members of said groups, she also found
herself at significant odds on more than one occasion, furthering her sense of isolation as a clinic
owner. Due to the inherently competitive nature of funding and name-recognition, Hill often
struggled to work productively with such large-scale groups, finding their policy work far
removed from the everyday realities of running an abortion clinic. However, Hill changed her
tactics as she navigated the encroachment of increased state and federal regulations and
increasingly violent picketing. In particular, she began to file local and state lawsuits that
required financial support and the increased visibility that such larger organizations could
provide. But the working relationship was never completely comfortable. As Hill described
much of the time spent working side-by-side or directly together, “We never got anywhere with
94
Interview with Susan Hill by Johanna Schoen, 2009, in the Southern Oral History Program
Collection #4007, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University at North Carolina
at Chapel Hill.
33
politeness.”95 In plainer terms, she did not take kindly to the idea of meeting anti-choice activists
in the middle.
At the dawn of the 1980s (the first full decade of abortion legality in the country), clinics
owners like Hill confronted threats that had been nascent at most in the previous decade—in
particular, escalating violence at the hands of anti-choice activists. In the nearly two decades
between Roe v. Wade and the filing of NOW vs. Scheidler, Hill combatted three types of neardaily disturbances to the smooth maintenance of her clinics and provision of abortion services:
staged protest, trespassing, and acts of outright violence—such as shootings and bomb threats.
As day-to-day clinic operations became increasingly difficult, owners and operators like Hill
looked toward large-scale feminist organizations, such as the National Organization for Women
(NOW), for financial and social support against tides of anti-choice activity. This chapter will
examine Hill’s relationship to NOW from 1980 onward—culminating in the filing of the NOW
vs. Scheidler Supreme Court case, in which Hill was a key plaintiff. The political infighting
amongst abortion advocates would prove divisive and counterproductive as pro-choice groups
attempted to fight back against the encroachment of anti-choice sentiment in both public opinion
and the legislative arena. Ultimately, the fear of losing abortion access helped to cement legal
alliance between Washington-based women’s groups and grassroots agents like Susan Hill,
working “on the ground” to maintain abortion accessibility.
95
Interview with Susan Hill by Johanna Schoen, 2009, in the Southern Oral History Program
Collection #4007, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University at North Carolina
at Chapel Hill.
34
The Politics of Abortion Advocacy
Perhaps Hill’s most central concern in relation to groups like NOW was her sense that
such national umbrella groups focused on the issue of abortion only when it was relevant to the
political climate of the United States on the whole. While NOW was absolutely invested in the
Roe decision as a self-declared feminist organization, national chapter newsletters reveal a
notable lack of discussion regarding abortion rights immediately following the ruling.96 1974 and
1975 newsletters mention abortion access only insofar as it relates to potential legislative
backlash—like the passage of the Hyde Amendment. Furthermore, the wide scope of issues that
NOW devoted itself to—from the Equal Rights Amendment all the way to sexism in magazines,
and everything in between—meant that abortion access was a rotating topic, more often than not
sidelined or covered shallowly. This is not a critique of the purity of NOW’s intentions: as a
large, well-organized feminist organization, NOW has earned a well-deserved place as one of the
most consistent examples of dedicated leadership in the women’s movement. Individual
chapters, members, and national leaders of NOW contributed to the abortion rights movement in
incalculable ways. This chapter seeks to critically examine NOW’s role as it related specifically
to Susan Hill’s lived experiences—with the understanding that Hill nurtured her own biases and
opinions regarding the organization.
Initially, NOW made little mention of outright clinic defense. While local NOW chapter
newsletters such as Raleigh-Durham’s did include relatively frequent mention of local solidarity
marches, information for letter-writing campaigns, and encouragement to vote for pro-choice
candidates, NOW avoided direct calls-to-action in relation to clinics. In a November 1973 NOW
96
National Organization for Women Additional records, 1970-2011. Schlesinger Library,
Radcliffe Institute, Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass.
35
newsletter, distributed to members and subscribers in and around Park Ridge, Illinois, the
organization offered three suggestions for arguments to utilize when discussing abortion rights:
For criminal law…. abortion will be prosecuted as murder although never considered as
such even under the strictest laws in the past…. for taxes, would the fetus be counted as a
dependent for tax purposes—from the moment of conception? For immigration…what
would be the citizenship requirements of the fetus? Could the fetus be a person and not a
citizen? These are some of the arguments distributed National NOW against the proposed
amendment. Use them!97
These tongue-in-cheek conversation starters formed the cornerstone of a campaign for NOW
members to petition their representatives on the issue of abortion—the most frequently employed
call-to-action. “Legislative alerts” were regular, if brief, features of the Charlotte, NC NOW
newsletters, reminding members to thank representatives who voted in favor of choice, and chide
those who voted against. Similarly, newsletters often included brief musings on the nature of
abortion in light of recent legality—in a 1976 newsletter based out of West Point, New York, a
blurb entitled “The Right to Choose” sought to clarify the national branch of NOW’s official
position on the matter into easily digestible points. “The National Organization for Women is not
an advocate for abortion,” the paragraph began, “The National Organization for Women is an
advocate of a woman’s right to choose or not choose abortion…This is a very difficult topic.”98
Though there was slight variance in the wording used based on the individual chapter members
writing each newsletter, the official position tread carefully on the issue of “radically embracing
abortion rights,” as mused on by the West Point newsletter.99
97
National Organization for Women Additional records, 1970-2011. Schlesinger Library,
Radcliffe Institute, Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass.
98
Ibid.
99
Interview with Susan Hill by Johanna Schoen, 2008, in the Southern Oral History Program
Collection #4007, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University at North Carolina
at Chapel Hill.
36
Only in the mid-to-late eighties did NOW’s newsletters mention targeted clinic
harassment. A 1989 newsletter from the Westchester, New York National Organization for
Women newsletter alerted chapter members to a need for clinic escorts—a phenomenon that had
emerged in response to an uptick in anti-choice behavior. “As we reported in our last issue,” the
call to action read, “women entering Westchester abortion clinics are harassed by anti-choice
groups. We hope to alleviate their stress they cause clinic visitors by acting as escorts for women
entering the All Women’s Health Clinic in White Plains.”100 Little information beyond this was
provided, leaving more questions than answers regarding the role and organization of such
escorting efforts.
Lawsuits spearheaded by NOW specifically related to the issue of abortion were simply
not as numerous as campaigns relating to, say, the Equal Rights Amendment. This isn’t to say
that NOW leadership failed to recognize the importance of the ERA in relation to abortion rights,
and vice-versa—but for clinic workers like Hill, the issue of choice and access was paramount.
More often than not, resolutions and legal victories were given as brief blurbs in monthly updates
for everyday members, and losses were reported and framed in the context of requiring more
financial donation on the part of readers. Still, it is worth framing the eventual filing of NOW vs.
Scheidler within the context of similar (if smaller-scaled) legal altercations. In 1979, nationallevel NOW members testified before Congress on the issue of abortion access for military
dependents.101 In 1980, NOW’s federal board pushed for a broader and more inclusive
reproductive rights provision in the Democratic National Platform, ratified against the wishes of
100
National Organization for Women Additional records, 1970-2011. Schlesinger Library,
Radcliffe Institute, Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass.
101
Ibid.
37
Jimmy Carter (their eventual nominee).102 In 1983, NOW activists “…defeat[ed] almost all antiabortion bills introduced in state legislatures…the U.S Supreme Court [then] ruled 6-3 that
government can not interfere with women’s abortion rights unless it is clearly justified by
‘accepted medical practice.’”103 This Supreme Court ruling, Akron vs. Akron Center for
Reproductive Health, brought into question the validity of local ordinances pertaining to the
regulation of abortion—such as parental notification statutes, mandated waiting periods, and
forced, scripted “counsel” by doctors performing the procedure.104 Ultimately, the court’s
findings—that such local ordinances as found in the local Ohioan law violated the federal
interest in preserving a right to privacy as scripted by Roe v. Wade—struck down similar laws
which had begun to encroach on the operations of clinics like Hill’s. NOW’s letter writing
campaigns around the nation, combined with physical rallies outside of the Supreme Court, had
certainly provided a strong and visible show of support for the preservation of abortion rights as
outlined by Roe v. Wade. These efforts were not in vain. But clinic owners like Hill often felt
separated from the political process, sensing that the very public faces of feminist advancement,
especially on the issue of abortion rights, existed in separate spheres from those who got up to
work each and every day on the frontlines of the procedure.
By 1985, however, the presence of anti-choice protestors, whipped into a frenzy by
eventual defendant Joseph Scheidler, reached a boiling point: NOW chapters across the country
participated in “…around-the-clock vigils in 30 abortion clinics in 18 states to guard against
potential violence; [while] NOW activists continued to provide clinic escort for patients.”105
102
National Organization for Women Additional records, 1970-2011. Schlesinger Library,
Radcliffe Institute, Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass.
103
Ibid.
104
Ibid.
105
Ibid.
38
Coinciding with the twelfth anniversary of Roe, these vigils still served the purpose of providing
visible, vocal opposition to the presence of anti-choice demonstrations and left little doubt that
political timing remained their driving motivation.106 While political activism certainly formed
the cornerstone of advocacy on behalf of abortion rights, the question remained for Hill and her
associates of where NOW’s presence would be felt once the planned vigils came to an end—and
what form of engagement with abortion providers was most effective to the overarching cause.
Escalation of Staged Protest
In May of 1984, Joseph Scheidler was the keynote speaker for the first national antiabortion convention, held in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.107 According to Johanna Schoen, his
primary speaking topic was on “effective confrontation,” and as part of the hands-on training,
“200 participants went to Women’s Awareness Clinic in Fort Lauderdale and blocked all clinic
entrances.”108 Emboldened by President Reagan’s invitation of anti-abortion activists (including
Scheidler himself) to the White House in January of 1984, anti-abortion activists sensed the
opportunity to make a fundamental shift in their approaches. “Demonstrations became dramatic
performances,” writes Schoen, with Scheidler acting as the visionary and face of clinic
harassment.109
106
Interview with Susan Hill by Johanna Schoen, 2009, in the Southern Oral History Program
Collection #4007, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University at North Carolina
at Chapel Hill.
107
Schoen, Johanna. Abortion after Roe (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2015),
170.
108
Ibid.
109
Ibid.
39
By 1985, Scheidler had published what would quickly become a definitive manual for
picketing clinics—Closed: 99 Ways to Stop Abortion.110 Scheidler described the “problem” of
abortion in terms of murder. “They are killing babies. They are killed in abortion clinics or
hospitals or doctor’s offices and pro-lifers go there to intercede for the baby’s life.”111 As such,
Scheidler openly encouraged his followers to imagine that pregnant women entering clinics with
the intention to abort were committing on the precipice of committing an act equivalent to
murdering a toddler.112 “The line between sidewalk counseling and regular protest activities
became impossible to draw,” writes Schoen, “…administrators at clinics across the country
reported that on some days, they counted as many as 100 protestors in front of their clinics.”113
Scheidler seemed to be a permanent fixture at several of Hill’s clinics by the mid-80s.
Hill sought the help of police to curb the activities of Scheidler and his followers, with little
success. “Up to a third of police officers ignored antiabortion activists who violated the law,”
writes Schoen, “and some even sided with protestors…some offered antiabortion protestors
coffee...another showed Joseph Scheidler where patients were sneaking into a clinic during a sitin.”114 In Fargo, officers “watched protestors pound on patient’s cars and stuff papers in their
window as patients drove toward the clinic entrance.”115 In the early 1980s, protestors outside the
Fargo clinic began chaining themselves to vehicles they had brought in, sometimes soldering
handcuffs to the underbelly of cars with the engines removed, shutting down clinic operations for
110
Schoen, Johanna. Abortion after Roe (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2015),
170.
111
Ibid.
112
Ibid.
113
Ibid.
114
Ibid.
115
Interview with Susan Hill by Johanna Schoen, 2008, in the Southern Oral History Program
Collection #4007, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University at North Carolina
at Chapel Hill.
40
the day.116 Sometimes, the protestors would chain themselves to the vehicles of patients, as an
“ongoing thing.”117 “They were chaining themselves to the cars, underneath the cars…right as
they came in,” recalled Susan Hill, “and one [major] case involved…the leaders of this…[these
kinds of people] came in and they were the most violent.”118 One particularly notable example of
outside protest taken too far stuck with Hill:
I think I told you one of the protesters, a big guy, and he’d come in, it was near Christmas
and he was dressed up as Santa Claus, came in in a cab. The cab let him off and he ran
into the building, broke in while we had patients, and went into the recovery room. And
he was about six-foot-eight and started yelling, “Ho ho ho. You’re killing your babies.”
I mean it was a nightmare for these poor girls. And they called it the Santa Claus case.119
While darkly comical in its execution, break-ins such as these were a source of constant agitation
and trauma for patients and clinic staff alike. Once a protestor crossed the threshold of the clinic,
staff were essentially at his or her mercy, with little to no way to determine how destructive and
violent the protestor intended to be. Each successful break-in inched the anti-choice activists
closer to stopping the gears of abortion clinics in their day-to-day work. Hill summed up the
advancements thusly: “These were all tests. They were playing with us, seeing how much you
could get by with, and teaching people how to do this stuff. We should’ve charged them for
training people.”120
116
Interview with Susan Hill by Johanna Schoen, 2008, in the Southern Oral History Program
Collection #4007, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University at North Carolina
at Chapel Hill.
117
Ibid.
118
Ibid.
119
Ibid.
120
Ibid.
41
Arson and Bombings: Escalating Violence
In 1978, NOW published a brief expose of the building tensions outside of abortion
clinics, courtesy of NARAL’s (a non-lobbying feminist mobilization organization) research. The
article was included in a March newsletter by the Westchester NOW chapter. It described “how
the anti-choice people are beginning to do things to get their point across,” especially, “working
outside the law.”121 The author urged, “We must be aware of how dangerous they are to the
freedoms of all people and put all our efforts in the continued battle for freedom.”122 The report
was unflinching and straightforward in its documentation of the type of violence orchestrated by
anti-choice activists:
…In Columbus, Ohio, on January 8, 1978, a still-unidentified arsonist broke into a clinic
and set ten paper fires throughout. Not all of the fires caught—but an estimated $22,000
worth of damage was done. During the night of February 15, 1978, a clinic in Cleveland,
Ohio—Concerned Women’s Clinic—was broken into and all upholster was slashed, all
phone lines were cut, other equipment was damaged, and an iodine-like chemical was
thrown on the walls, floors and ceilings…Police were called but declined a request for an
investigation.123
The mention of police declining investigation, while a mere note in the broader context of the
report, is consistent with the type of treatment Hill commonly endured at almost all of her
clinics. As mentioned in both the previous section and chapter, police often chose to turn a blind
eye toward the activity of anti-choice activists—even in the face of outright arson. Such blatant
disregard for the safety of clinic workers and patients alike solidified the sense that abortion
clinics were too controversial or troublesome to protect. The report continued:
Saturday, February 18th, 1978, anti-choice activists returned to finish the job and burn the
clinic. At approximately 11:30 a.m., a man in a blue delivery uniform entered the clinic
121
National Organization for Women Additional records, 1970-2011. Schlesinger Library,
Radcliffe Institute, Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass.
122
Ibid.
123
Ibid.
42
after clinic activities were well under-way. He went to the back of the clinic to the
laboratory room where instruments were sterilized. In this same area were several
procedure rooms and approximately 20 patients…because the man was wearing a
uniform, a lab technician opened the door…he threw gasoline over her straight into her
eyes and over the rest of the room. She was temporarily blinded and according to one
patient account, ran into the hall saying, ‘I can’t see, I can’t see!’ The man ignited the
gasoline soaked room…the man fled. A description was given to police, but reportedly
they closed the case just days after the incident…124
The newsletter transcription concluded with a short, foreboding warning— “Not only are these
incidents increasing in number, the level of violence is increasing…it would seem these people
will stop at nothing to deny women their constitutional right to choose.”125 While it conveyed
appropriate anxiety, the NOW newsletter was far from prescriptive regarding the next steps
activists and abortion rights advocates should take. As clinic owners like Hill struggled against
their day-to-day reality of increasingly violent reactions against choice, the question of what
exactly could be done became more and more pressing.
It is worth noting that NARAL, too, clashed with clinic owners. In a 2008 interview, Hill
noted the frustrating hypocrisy of organizations like NARAL. Such groups raised significant
funds for abortion clinics and visible supportive protests while avoiding direct engagement with
those working in the field. NARAL asked Hill to join NARAL’s national advisory board in
1976. She would have been the only actual provider in the group. “NARAL didn’t want
providers,” she told Schoen in 2008, “They really thought it sort of sullied them. They wanted to
be pure, which really irritated us...I would invite NARAL people to our Westchester clinic in
New York. I’d say, ‘Do you want to go up, want to see the operating rooms?’ ‘Oh no. We don’t
124
National Organization for Women Additional records, 1970-2011. Schlesinger Library,
Radcliffe Institute, Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass.
125
Interview with Susan Hill by Johanna Schoen, 2008, in the Southern Oral History Program
Collection #4007, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University at North Carolina
at Chapel Hill.
43
want to go in there.’ I mean that was sort of the split, even in the early ‘70s.”126 Especially given
the increasingly frantic social climate surrounding clinics, Hill felt sidelined and tokenized by
groups like NARAL, further illustrating such groups’ lack of cohesive response to the crisis on
the front lines.
Hill’s clinics suffered first hand under the rise in arson and bomb-centric threats facing
facilities nationwide in the 1980s. As the unofficial epicenter of Scheidler’s concentrated efforts,
the Fargo clinic shouldered the majority of such attacks. “We got threatening phone calls all the
time,” Hill recalled, “so much that police were tired of hearing us call them.”127
As discussed in the previous chapter, bomb threats began at the Fort Wayne Women’s
Health Clinic on the morning of August 11, 1979, during a particularly busy workday.128
Scheidler waved his microphone high, shouting offensive phrases at patients entering the
clinics—including “Your cervix will be cracked!” and “What kind of mother will your children
think you are when they learn you killed their brother and sister?”129 The bomb threat seemed to
come from a sympathizer independent of Scheidler and the protestors outside, leading to
panicked confusion when authorities arrived to evacuate the clinic and surrounding area.
Scheidler’s group interpreted the evacuation as a sign that a woman must have died from
a botched abortion inside the clinics, leading to the crowds swelling under cries of, “Butcher!
Butcher! Get the butcher! Kill the butcher!”130 Lack of cohesive police organization following
126
Interview with Susan Hill by Johanna Schoen, 2008, in the Southern Oral History Program
Collection #4007, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University at North Carolina
at Chapel Hill.
127
Ibid.
128
Schoen, Johanna. Abortion after Roe (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2015),
164.
129
Ibid.
130
Ibid.
44
the evacuation caused protestors to have direct access to patients flooding outside—with no
barrier between. “It took ten people to evacuate the physician (providing abortions) to a house
two doors down,” writes Schoen, “while protestors blocked the back door of the clinic.”131
Protestors got in the face of the doctor as staff struggled to find safe ground, with no aid from
law enforcement. “Fifty bucks and I’ll slit your throat,” one man shouted, “God knows the
people who kill.”132
The city of Fort Wayne dispatched only one member from the city bomb and arson
squad, who ultimately did not search the building for an explosive because he was “unfamiliar
with the contents of the clinic.”133 It was a full thirty minutes before patients and staff were able
to be moved back into the clinic for procedures—only following an investigation by the clinic
administrator while the bomb squad technician waited in his car.134 Miraculously, patients were
still taken care of that day, albeit shaken from the experience of the evacuation and picketers.
When the clinic received a second bomb threat the following week, police again were not
properly dispatched, “leaving clinic security guards and escorts to evaluate the building and
guide patients to safety.”135 Understandably, Hill’s patience with protestors was thin—
increasingly so following each threat and unanswered call for help. McCoy Faulkner, heading
her security detail at the time, recalled Hill’s growing desire to tell off protestors to their face,
while fully understanding it not to be an effective strategy to reduce their presence. “When we
traveled together, to the more troubled clinics, like in Fort Wayne…she didn’t like, she thought I
131
Schoen, Johanna. Abortion after Roe (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2015),
165.
132
Ibid.
133
Ibid.
134
Ibid., 166.
135
Ibid.
45
was doing too good of a job, because she wasn’t getting the confrontation,” he remembered. “I
would say, ‘Okay, Susan, the US Marshal said you need to stay in line. She’d say, ‘This is how I
do it.’ And I’d say, ‘But we don’t want to go to jail.’”136
Faulkner understood her desire to engage directly with those who made the lives of her
patients miserable—all the more exacerbated by the sense that when police did get involved,
they were harsher with clinic personnel than those actually picketing. “I was lifting her off the
ground and carrying her inside once,” he recalled, “and she was screaming. She thought the
police were being more aggressive with us than with them. I picked her up and carried her inside.
I didn’t want her to be arrested.”137
Hill’s clinics continued to endure bomb and arson threats on a regular basis throughout
the duration of the 1980s. The unrelenting stream of promises of violence, thrown into sharp
relief against the pressures of the growing national anti-choice movement, convinced abortion
activists and providers of the need to take meaningful action.
The Legal Way Out
When asked about her relationship to Ellie Smeal, eventual founder of the Feminist
Majority Foundation, Susan Hill recalled a fruitful friendship, with particular note of Smeal’s
focused personality. “She calls me in ’86, and says, Morris Dees was on the phone with
her…and I’d known him for years. He’s a civil rights attorney in Montgomery, Alabama…it’s
the Southern Poverty Law Center, and he’s the founder of it…we weren’t close friends then but
136
Interview with McCoy Faulkner by Justine Orlovsky-Schnitzler, 2016, in the Southern Oral
History Program Collection #4007, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University at
North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
137
Ibid.
46
we knew each other,” she recalled.138 “She said, ‘We need a plaintiff to go after Randall Terry
and all of them.’…I said, ‘Why can’t you get some of the other providers?’…’We’ve asked them
but they won’t do it. They don’t want to show their records. They don’t want to show their
money or anything.’ And that pissed me off.”139 While Hill was unsure of her ability to aid the
lawsuit, the lack of other providers’ participation was a strong catalyst for her consenting to the
lawsuit. She continued: “I said, ‘How long do you think this is going to take?”’ Morris said, ‘Oh,
it’ll take about two years, that’s all.’ I said, ‘Okay,’ because we’d been involved in a lot of cases
before that. She [Ellie Smeal] said to me, ‘You’re the only person I know, or you’re the only
group that’ll stick it out, that’ll do it.’ Okay. So I was a sap for them. I said, ‘Okay, fine. Let’s
meet. I want to see what you’re doing.’”140
Smeal had been elected as president of the National Organization for Women for the
second time in 1985 (her first tenure was from 1977-1982).141 A graduate of Duke University
and a strong pro-choice advocate, Smeal knew that groups like NOW would need to begin taking
concrete action. She also had a strong sense that providers would need to be at the center of a
legal case that sought to end to violent anti-choice action.142 Here was the piece NOW had been
lacking in prior endeavors, from the perspective of Hill: a willingness to put complete and total
public support behind those who decided their lives to abortion access, and present such
providers as experts in their field. Hill recalled, “…During the violence, there was a group of
providers, well some providers and feminist groups, Planned Parenthood and Ellie and NOW.
138
Interview with Susan Hill by Johanna Schoen, 2008, in the Southern Oral History Program
Collection #4007, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University at North Carolina
at Chapel Hill.
139
Ibid.
140
Ibid.
141
Ibid.
142
Ibid.
47
They asked me to come to them, come to the meetings, their Washington meetings, because I
guess we were victims. They liked having a lot of victims there or something.”143 Though an
initially shaky union, Hill and NOW were pure in their determination to partner to take legal
action against anti-choice violence. As with the Roe decision, they agreed that the only way to
ensure a blanket law was applied to protect clinics in every state was through the Supreme Court.
Hill’s role as an “informant” (that is, someone who knew the ins and outs of running an abortion
facility) threw into sharp relief what NOW had missed in earlier lobbying efforts, as
demonstrated by their referral to abortion providers as “victims” of anti-choice violence.144
While it is true that the ever-growing threat to providers, facilities, and patients topped NOW’s
list of concerns, Hill notes that this type of previous engagement with providers was a hangover
of political bargaining and maneuvering. Hill continued, “So I went because I wanted to be
involved in what they were doing…I thought that was sort of our role, was to tell them what
really was happening out there. So, I went, and it was good because some of the pro-choice
groups that were in Washington didn’t know shit about what was really going on. They were
just doing their bit. I would argue with some of them. I’d go, ‘That’s not true. That’s not what
happened.’”145
As Hill prepared herself to stand as a plaintiff in what was sure to be a draining and
extensive court battle, she consulted with McCoy Faulkner. As Hill’s constant companion and
security specialist, he had personally witnessed a decade and a half of clinic violence. In a 2016
143
Interview with Susan Hill by Johanna Schoen, 2009, in the Southern Oral History Program
Collection #4007, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University at North Carolina
at Chapel Hill.
144
Interview with Susan Hill by Johanna Schoen, 2008, in the Southern Oral History Program
Collection #4007, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University at North Carolina
at Chapel Hill.
145
Ibid.
48
interview, he expressed the simple truth that pushed Hill firmly into the camp of participation in
a large-scale lawsuit. “I said, someone is going to get murdered if we don’t move,” he recalled,
“and I know she knew that, deep down. We all did. We just had to be brave and crazy enough to
do something about it.”146
Hill confirmed her and others’ fear that anti-choice violence would soon reach its goal of
an ever-increasing list of murdered doctors, patients, and feminist activists. “She [Ellie Smeal]
believed that we were going to get killings and this was the only way to stop it. They had trouble
in Pensacola [Florida] and they’d had a bunch of attacks there. Feminist Majority had been
involved in it. We’ve had trouble in Delaware. That’s where our first trouble started, with the
same people. We agreed to do the case. Morris filed it in Delaware. It was originally filed in
Delaware and then the right-to-lifers moved it to Chicago. It wasn’t a RICO case at first. It was
a Sherman Anti-Trust case, which was a stretch to say the least, but it was all they could find to
use. It was basically just to stop them from the Operation Rescue stuff because it was getting so
violent. That was 1986.”147 Despite the gravity of the situation, Hill was reticent to involve
herself in a potentially fruitless conflict. While she had experienced court cases at the local and
state level, her primary work was in the day-to-day operations of clinics—which meant heavy
patient interaction, frequent travel, and the exciting pull of making decisions that affected large
groups of individuals. As a provider, her greatest joy in her line of work came from the
satisfaction of helping women. Thus, she feared that becoming embroiled in a lengthy and
146
Interview with McCoy Faulkner by Justine Orlovsky-Schnitzler, 2016, in the Southern Oral
History Program Collection #4007, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University at
North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
147
Interview with Susan Hill by Johanna Schoen, 2008, in the Southern Oral History Program
Collection #4007, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University at North Carolina
at Chapel Hill.
49
potentially losing legal case would take her away from her passion. Still, Faulkner’s words, and
her own experiences, weighed heavily on her mind. She decided to take legal action in order to
help improve clinic conditions beyond her own sphere of influence.148
Hill consented to join the lawsuit in mid-1986. In June, NOW vs. Scheidler was formally
filed in Wilmington, Delaware—the site of one of Hill’s very first clinics. Hill represented her
clinics in Delaware and Florida as an undersigned plaintiff and key witness. She and others
anxiously awaited the case’s outcome—hopeful that a ruling in NOW’s favor would beat back
clinic protestors’ increasing violence. As the sun set on the court filing, Hill and her fellow
plaintiffs had only an inkling of the nasty uphill battle they faced.
148
Interview with McCoy Faulkner by Justine Orlovsky-Schnitzler, 2016, in the Southern Oral
History Program Collection #4007, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University at
North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
50
“Every attorney that we’ve ever had in any state has been afraid of the word abortion in front of
a jury, because they’d never trialed anything that like before.”-Susan Hill149
Chapter Three
“If We Don’t Do It, They’re Going to Kill Someone”: NOW vs. Scheidler at the Supreme
Court (1989-1998)
Introduction
Asked to recollect the nuances of the court case that would come to define anti-choice
harassment in the legal sphere, McCoy Faulkner hesitated before reiterating what would prove to
be a common sentiment for those involved. “It was filed as a RICO case,” he mused in a 2016
interview, “and that was very hard to prove. But I’ll tell you what. That case took the fight out of
him [Joseph Scheidler]. He was a changed man after litigation.”150 Susan Hill, too, remembered
Scheidler’s tenure as a defendant in the ongoing case as a catalyst for, if nothing else, selfreflection on the limits of anti-choice action in a changing United States. “He really thought he
was going to win,” she told Johanna Schoen, “and it shook him up a bit to think that maybe what
he was doing was actually illegal.”151
Amongst the general American populace, it is safe to say few experience first-hand the inner
workings of the Supreme Court. Even fewer have been forced to contend with the reality of how long
legal battles can take. The National Organization for Women’s (NOW) case filed against Joseph
149
Interview with Susan Hill by Johanna Schoen, 2009, in the Southern Oral History Program
Collection #4007, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University at North Carolina
at Chapel Hill.
150
Interview with McCoy Faulkner by Justine Orlovsky-Schnitzler, 2016, in the Southern Oral
History Program Collection #4007, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University at
North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
151
Interview with Susan Hill by Johanna Schoen, 2011, in the Southern Oral History Program
Collection #4007, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University at North Carolina
at Chapel Hill.
51
Scheidler and the Pro-Life Action Network (PLAN) was no exception. Following Susan Hill’s
agreement to sign on as a witness, the case moved forward under the direction of Morris Dees of the
Southern Poverty Law Center.152 Initially filed in 1986 in Delaware (the location of two of Hill’s
clinics), the case would soon find itself entangled in various circuits and courts of appeals as the push to
define the behavior of Joseph Scheidler (and PLAN, of which he was acting director) as an example of a
racketeering enterprise. In 1988, the Southern Poverty Law Center pulled out of the case, leaving room
for NOW’s organizational attorney, Patricia Ireland, to head the legal team. It was under Ireland’s
direction that the RICO charges were formally introduced to the list of charges against Scheidler and
PLAN—requiring the expansion of the defendant list under a class-action lawsuit.153 By February of
1989, NOW’s list of defendants included several additional anti-choice activists, including Terry
Randall and the organization known as Operation Rescue.154
Under the conspiracy clause of RICO, NOW was able to formally accuse those participating in
the efforts of the listed organizations as “co-conspirators” in the actions that owners like Hill had been
dealing with for decades: including arson, bomb threats, and murder.155 Ultimately, thanks to the
meticulous documentation on the part of clinic workers like Hill, NOW vs. Scheidler was able to render
a successful ruling against Joseph Scheidler under the recently reformed RICO Act—proving through
legal cause in 1994 that organized anti-choice harassment could be construed as conspiracy and
racketeering. This was a departure from previous pro-choice legal strategy, which situated bodily
autonomy and right to privacy as the cornerstone of reproductive law and policy.
Hill certainly didn’t imagine her role in the NOW lawsuit would involve a near twenty-year legal
152
Schoen, Johanna. Abortion after Roe (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2015),
210.
153
Ibid., 211.
154
Ibid.
155
Ibid., 210.
52
entanglement when she signed on as a plaintiff against Scheidler. She spoke of the pressure she felt upon
agreeing to join the suit, offset only by the understanding that the case had potential to positively impact
a great number of people’s lives. “I talked to Ellie [Smeal] about it, and she said, ‘Well what are we
going to do if you’re the only provider that’s sticking?’ I said, ‘Well, we’re going to stay because
somebody has to do this.’ And so we did…I just knew it was the right thing for us to do, that it would
probably bust us economically, but that if we walked away from it, they would’ve won.”156
Filing a case related to reproductive healthcare under the RICO Act would have been impossible
had the limitations of the original decision remained intact by the time NOW vs. Scheidler was coming
into fruition. RICO, an acronym for Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations, came onto the
national scene in 1970, having been signed into law by President Richard Nixon.157 As evidenced by its
title, the law was intended initially to prosecute members of mafia groups and others actively engaged in
organized crime.158 The specifications of the ruling required proof of collusion, primarily for economic
motivation and gain.159 Additionally, RICO expanded previous federal definitions of conspiracy—
making it a crime to be associated with organizations committing at least two of the thirty-five crimes
outlined in RICO, rather than just the orchestrator of such crimes.160 These expansions paved the way
for NOW to successfully file under RICO approximately two decades after its passage. However, it is
important to recognize several sub-rulings that took place in the years immediately preceding NOW’s
official filing of their suit.
In 1989, a broad interpretation of RICO was upheld by the Supreme Court, paving the way for
156
Interview with Susan Hill by Johanna Schoen, 2009, in the Southern Oral History Program
Collection #4007.
157
Schoen, Johanna. Abortion after Roe (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2015),
199.
158
Ibid., 200.
159
Ibid., 199.
160
Ibid.
53
the Court to later categorize Scheidler’s actions as racketeering.161 In a New York Times article dated
from the 26th of June, 1989, Linda Greenhouse wrote, “Although the law also covers criminal
prosecutions, its popularity in civil litigation has grown rapidly because it has been so broadly
interpreted by many lower courts and because it permits successful plaintiffs to collect triple
damages…the decision also rejected a requirement proposed by some business groups that a pattern
could be established only if there was proof of connection to organized crime.”162 Rejection of pattern
grounded in a burden of proof relating to organized crime was crucial in clearing the way for NOW’s
RICO case to move forward. Patricia Ireland’s decision to expand the suit as a civil filing similarly
afforded the opportunity for lenient ruling and broad interpretation and application of said civil-RICO
law.
According to a Washington Post article detailing the new provisions from the 30th of June, 1989,
“…RICO is both a criminal and a civil statute aimed, ostensibly, at racketeers and organized crime…but
private citizens can also bring civil suits against persons who engage in "a pattern of racketeering
activity," the pattern being established by proof of "two acts of racketeering activity" within a 10-year
period.”163 The article sardonically snipped, “Plaintiffs like this statute because instead of going into
crowded state courts and suing for fraud, for example, they can go to federal court and collect triple
damages, costs and attorneys' fees. They seek continuously to stretch the statute to its limits.”164 While
this take was perhaps a tad cynical in its approach of legal goals and strategy, it was thanks to such
leniency in civil application of RICO that Hill and Ireland were able to move forward in confidence with
their case against anti-choice racketeering.
161
Schoen, Johanna. Abortion after Roe (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2015),
207.
162
Greenhouse, Linda. “Broad Use of RICO is Upheld”. New York Times, 26 June 1989.
163
“Muzzy Laws: The RICO Case.” The Washington Post. 30 June 1989.
164
Ibid.
54
The Backbone of the Case
In a letter to Susan Hill dated 1989, Patricia Ireland made clear her justification and interest in
prosecuting Scheidler under RICO. “As long as anti-abortion extremists continue to behave like
gangsters”, she wrote, “it is wholly appropriate to treat them as gangsters under the racketeering law.”165
In the case of Joseph Scheidler specifically, his self-published text Closed: 99 Ways to Stop Abortion
served as both a blueprint of predicted future behavior (bolstering legal claims by NOW that his
followers were privy to planned attacks), and evidence of strong organization that could be legally
construed as conspiracy. In the preserved file of NOW’s legal documentation at Harvard’s Schlesinger
Library Collection, a heavily footnoted and annotated copy of Closed clearly outlines NOW’s legal
strategy. The first page preserved for court use, heavily marked up in scrawls in black ink by one of
NOW’s legal team members, includes advice such as, “It is encouraging to see the new militancy
spreading rapidly within the pro-life movement…frequently, there is conflict both locally and nationally,
between traditional pro-life groups that take less aggressive action and activist groups.”166 Isolated from
action, Scheidler’s writing was inflammatory—not illegal. Contextualized with the uptick in clinic
invasions and rising incidences of arson, bomb threats, and swelling protest, however, his words took on
a far deadlier connotation—one that formed the cornerstone of NOW’s prosecution.
A stack of audio and letter transcriptions between Scheidler and various evangelical leaders
dated 1982-1987 reveal his increasing frustration with what he saw as “complacency” amongst pro-life
groups.167 In a letter addressed to John Cavanaugh O’Keefe of the Human Life International, Scheidler
wrote, “I realize not everyone agrees with my style, and I can see why…..I am convinced that what I am
165
National Organization for Women Additional records, 1970-2011. Schlesinger Library,
Radcliffe Institute, Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass.
166
Ibid.
167
Ibid.
55
doing needs to be done….I think it was a very good thing for us to get together in Ft. Lauderdale and
organize this pro-life mafia [emphasis the NOW attorney who circled the word in thick black ink and
underlined the word multiple times] to work in concert (sic) on important activist programs.”168 Later
depositions would reveal Scheidler considered his terminology to be “harmless.”169
With Patricia Ireland in charge of the prosecution, the legal team set about categorizing
Scheidler’s ideology and actions into the outlined components of a RICO charge. Notes created just
before the case was formally filed broke Scheidler’s crimes down thusly: “1) disregard of law—how
many times has Scheidler been jailed?... ‘The state can make all the stupid rules it wants and unless they
conform to the law of God, they are nothing. And not only do we have no obligation to obey them
[emphasis his own], we have an obligation to overcome them, to overturn them.”170 While disregard of
law is not an explicit charge under RICO, it does provide a base from which to build a case. By
positioning Scheidler as an agent who explicitly seeks to work outside of the confines of the justice
system, his character became as important to the prosecution as his involvement in anti-choice attacks
on clinics.
The listing of crimes continued: “2) trespass/sit ins/rescue missions: ‘I would break a law of
trespass because there is a higher law that I’m keeping’ (Closed ad)’…. asked if he believes his
constitutional rights include the privilege to illegally trespass, he answered ‘yet it does’…. speaking
about stopping abortions, he claims, ‘that’s worth breaking the law for.’”171 Scheidler would later claim
in defense that he was speaking specifically on the issue of illegally trespassing, and not advocating his
168
National Organization for Women Additional records, 1970-2011. Schlesinger Library,
Radcliffe Institute, Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass.
169
Schoen, Johanna. Abortion after Roe (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2015),
208.
170
National Organization for Women Additional records, 1970-2011. Schlesinger Library,
Radcliffe Institute, Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass.
171
Ibid.
56
‘rescue missions’ to become violent or “beyond the bounds of legality”—quickly argued as
contradictory by NOW attorneys.172
The third categorization of Scheidler’s enterprise, labeled “pressuring owners of property leased
to clinics to cancel lease or fail to renew” included a hand-written note by a NOW attorney underneath
the designation, reading “call owners.”173 Here, the importance of actual clinic owners’ testimony was
highly evident—without the input of individuals like Susan Hill, the case would be built on the words of
the defendant, putting NOW at an immediate disadvantage. In order to push forward with a cohesive
charge of racketeering, NOW attorneys needed to prove direct cause, rather than casual coincidence, in
the case of Scheidler’s followers committing illegal acts. Racketeering relies on the association of
members of a group, which explains the question scrawled at the bottom of Scheidler’s listed offenses,
presumably to be directed toward Scheidler in deposition— “Have you ever been informed that someone
decided to break the law as a result of listening to one of your presentations?”174
Hill, the Fargo and Fort Wayne Files, and the Development of the Prosecution
The first time Susan Hill met Joseph Scheidler in person, he was protesting one of her Delaware
clinics (the state where NOW vs. Scheidler would initially be filed). “He was leading about four hundred
people in front of our building,” she recalled, “He was at a protest in Delaware and he was leading about
four hundred people in front of our building. We were in an old building downtown. It was a big deal.
There was a lot of media there, Newsweek and ABC, Nightline or something were all there. It was in
the late ‘70s…I think I just went up to him and shook his hand and said, ‘Hi, I’m Susan Hill,’ whatever,
172
Schoen, Johanna. Abortion after Roe (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2015),
210.
173
National Organization for Women Additional records, 1970-2011. Schlesinger Library,
Radcliffe Institute, Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass.
174
Ibid.
57
and he shook my hand.”175 This anecdote of Hill’s initial meeting with Scheidler would set the pace for
much of this interaction over the course of the first lawsuit and Supreme Court ruling. She continued,
“He came up to me during the protest up to the door because I was standing in front of the door…I
mean, it was like two friends…it was sort of like, okay fine, and then he went out and started yelling,
‘Susan, you’re killing babies.’ But he could turn off just like that and be friendly.”176
In this particular interview, Hill was then asked to expand upon her emotions regarding
Scheidler’s ability to seemingly “turn-off” his aggression when communicating privately with prochoice activists and clinic workers. To that end, Hill emphasized the importance of maintaining a cool
disposition in the face of political manipulation. “I thought it was ironic, and that everybody was so
worked up. But that’s the first time I realized he was an actor, that it was all about his show. On the
other side, he was a person who had a family and wanted to know about your family, but he could turn it
on whenever he needed to…there was a lot of bullshit involved in it,” she recounted. “…He would
always have those two personas with me…We sort of had this respect for each other that we both lived
through the twenty years of litigation. You get this weird syndrome when you’re with opponents for
that long where you do know them. But seeing that the first time helped me to know what his real role
was, and it wasn’t that he was such a believer, he would hurt you. It was just, ‘This is my way to get, to
turn on, do what I need to do.’”177
Hill’s relationship to Scheidler provided a trove of information useful to the prosecution—
especially from the standpoint of developing the case under RICO. Depositions conducted prior to,
during, and immediately following the initially victorious ruling in NOW’s favor in 1994 revealed a
175
Interview with Susan Hill by Johanna Schoen, 2009, in the Southern Oral History Program
Collection #4007, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University at North Carolina
at Chapel Hill.
176
Ibid.
177
Ibid.
58
working association built steadily to a head as Scheidler’s tactics (and those of similar anti-choice
racketeers, like Randall Terry of Operation Rescue). While each of Hill’s operational clinics had
experienced picketing—at the hands of the Pro-Life Action Network, Operation Rescue, and a
smattering of smaller, less-affiliated anti-choice coalitions—Hill’s Fargo clinic would prove to be the
epicenter of racketeering activity—from the perspective of the prosecution.
In a deposition completed in 1997, Hill recalled the tide of violence that lent itself to explanation
under the RICO charges set forth by NOW’s attorneys. The questioner (an attorney for Scheidler and
Terry Randall), posited a question relating to the initial RICO filing, attempting to throw the entire case
out on the sole assumption that conspiracy couldn’t be proven. “In the amended RICO statement that has
been filed by your attorneys”, the written transcript of the interview begins, “it is alleged that Randall
Terry conspired with others to commit, among other things, arson. Do you have any information or
evidence to support that allegation?”178 In response, Hill, admittedly off-guard, admitted she had no such
tangible proof of conspiracy, as narrowly defined for the purposes of the deposition. When pressed
again, with regards to murder, and then an additional charge, she interrupted her interviewer, explaining
with what can be read as an air of frustration that it mattered less if Scheidler and Terry had written
conspiracy plots and more that their followers acted while in association with the larger groups—as
RICO purports to address. “There were others associated with—representing themselves to be
associated with—Operation Rescue that had other actions…an example would be Chet Gallagher…in
Fargo North Dakota for almost a year—arrested,” she argued, “He represented himself to us at least to
be associated with Operation Rescue. Marjorie Reed, her act of arson against the New Jersey clinic isn’t
included in this. She had represented herself, at least in articles that we had seen, to be associated with
178
Deposition of Susan Hill, taken 7thth June 1997 (pgs. 29-39). Courtesy of the Susan Hill
Papers of the Rubenstein Collection, Duke Libraries.
59
PLAN. Shelly Shannon…involved in the same Fargo time period. Flip Behnam, associated with
Operation Rescue, was in Fort Wayne in ’94. There are dozens.”179
The tone of the deposition shifted from this point forward—the question of the RICO claim
depended on what the defense would argue were “intangibles.”180 On the topic of death threats received
from the Fargo circuit by followers of Randall Terry, Hill was forced to attempt to qualify exactly why
death threats could be construed as promises for future violence. “They [letters containing threatening
messages] just—they just say that you’ll die,” Hill replied, when asked what messages the letters
contained. “Well, did you interpret this as a death threat?” the attorney for Scheidler retorted. “In a
word? Yes.”181
Dr. David Gunn
Hanging over the courthouse, and the proceedings of trial overall, was the murder was
Dr. David Gunn. On March 10, 1993, Dr. Gunn, a commuting provider for several of Hill’s
Southern Florida clinics was shot in Pensacola, Florida. The clinic at which he was shot was not
one of Hill’s—but Gunn and Hill had been colleagues for well over ten years at the time of his
death. Michael Griffin, the assailant, shot Gun three times in the back as the doctor exited his
car. Griffin allegedly shouted, “Don’t kill any more babies!” before opening fire on Gunn,
dropping the weapon once it was clear Gunn had been injured.182 Hill reported to the Washington
Post that “Gunn had been receiving death threats for several years but they had recently become
179
Deposition of Susan Hill, taken 7thth June 1997 (pgs. 29-39). Courtesy of the Susan Hill
Papers of the Rubenstein Collection, Duke Libraries.
180
Ibid.
181
Ibid.
182
Booth, William. “Doctor Killed During Abortion Protest.” 11 March 1993. Washington Post.
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/national/longterm/abortviolence/stories/gunn.htm>
60
more blatant and vicious.”183 The same article quoted a founder of Operation Rescue, the
Reverend Joseph Foreman, who ominously blamed anti-choice violence on those organizations
like NOW seeking legal protection against clinic harassment. “The Rev. Joseph Foreman, an
Operation Rescue founder, said the shooting could be the tip of the iceberg if the government
silences abortion protesters,” Washington Post reported. He continued, “I've been saying for
years that if the government insists on suppressing normal and time-honored dissent through
injunctions, it turns the field over to the rock-throwers, the bombers and the assassins.”184 This
attempt to differentiate protestors who committed acts of violence as radically different from the
bulk of anti-choice activists was the driving defense of both those involved in less high-profile
protest work and Scheidler, as he faced NOW’s forward momentum in the aftermath of the
shooting. David Gunn’s killer, Michael Griffin, self-reported as being a member of a fringe antiabortion group led by a minister named John Burt—quickly identified by the New York Times as
a former member of the KKK.185 When pressed for comment by the media in regards to possible
culpability for radicalization, Burt provide an answer eerily reminiscent of Scheidler’s
depositional defense: “"I'm like the general who sends out the orders to the troops," Burt said, "I
can't control it if one goes bad. I can't be responsible."186
On a personal level, Gunn’s murder (recognized as the first murder of an abortion
provider in the post-Roe United States) shook Hill profoundly. “I remember shaking and
thinking, ‘They really did it’,” she recalled to Johanna Schoen in Abortion After Roe. She
Booth, William. “Doctor Killed During Abortion Protest.” 11 March 1993. Washington Post.
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/national/longterm/abortviolence/stories/gunn.htm>
184
Ibid.
185
Rimer, Sara. “The Clinic Gunman and the Victim: Abortion Fight Reflected in Two Lives.”
14 March 1993. The New York Times. <http://www.nytimes.com/1993/03/14/us/the-clinicgunman-and-the-victim-abortion-fight-reflected-in-2-lives.html?pagewanted=all>
186
Ibid.
183
61
remembered asking her assistant to tell her that he was at least breathing, unable to process the
news as her assistant repeated, “No, I’m telling you, they said to tell you that he’s not alive.”187
Johanna Schoen wrote in Abortion After Roe that David Gunn’s death could be likened to the
floodgates being unhooked. “The killing of David Gunn led to an immediate escalation of
harassment and violence against abortion providers personally,” she wrote.188 The first few days
after the murder saw clinic owners and doctors alike across the country waking up to bricks
thrown their windows in their homes (often painted with anti-choice messaging), threatening
phone calls, and “nails poured over driveways, mixed with snow and ice.”189 In August, Shelley
Shannon shot George Tiller, one of Hill’s long-term providers, in both arms. Tiller would
survive this initial assault, though he would ultimately face several more attempted murders
before being killed in 2009.190 Ultimately, the new reality of providers being killed would be
described by Hill to New York Times thusly: “It was like two speeding trains coming from
opposite directions...it could have happened in Columbus, or Fargo, North Dakota, or Fort
Wayne, Indiana. It could have been any clinic or any doctor. But the percentages were higher
that it was going to be David because he probably worked at more clinics than anyone else."
In the context of the trial, Gunn’s murder represented a turning point in the prosecution,
leading to the 1994 ruling in NOW’s favor. The case had moved from Chicago’s Court of
Appeals to the Supreme Court in 1993, with NOW attorney Fay Clayton representing the
prosecution before the Court on December 8th, 1993. On January 24, 1994, the Supreme Court
handed NOW its first definitive victory—a “9-0 unanimous ruling in favor of NOW and the
187
Schoen, Johanna. Abortion after Roe (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2015),
210.
188
Ibid., 212.
189
Ibid.
190
Ibid.
62
prosecuting clinics and individual plaintiffs, holding that the plain language of the statute (RICO)
does not require an economic motive, and giving a green light to proceed with the trial after an
eight-year wait.”191
Hill recalled in a 2009 interview with Johanna Schoen that in giving testimony to the
Supreme Court, the impact of Gunn’s death was palpable in the room:
…I think everybody was just so shocked that violence could occur…You could tell
something had happened that was bad. I remember Kennedy saying something. He
never really asked questions because he’s sort of on the fence about this. Scalia didn’t say
anything, which I thought was amazing because I have seen and been in hearings where
he talks all the time. I remember the opponent saying something about the case and
about violence and they didn’t think it was necessary to have RICO or something, and
Kennedy leaned over and said to them in this really accusatory tone, “Does that include
killing doctors?” And the whole Supreme Court chambers just sat up. You could hear
them sit up. Everybody was like, “Oh, my god. He’s talking about--.” Because the case
had nothing to do with killing doctors, but it was so fresh in everybody’s mind. I
remember leaning over to Ellie because we were sitting together, and I said, “I think
we’re going to win.” And she said, “I can’t believe you said that.” We were all stunned,
and we did win that hearing…it was really raw.192
This quote in particular captures the emotional component the case—while the foundation on
which the lawsuit was built was certainly solid, it was ultimately the human element, particularly
in relation to violence, that drove the successful prosecution.
In 1994, following the unanimous ruling, NOW filed a motion to expand the NOW v.
Scheidler complaint to link defendants to recent shootings and arson attacks. This was what Hill
and members of NOW had dreamt of: a chance to hold people like Joseph Scheidler responsible
for what they saw as the cultivation and encouragement of a violent environment for clinic
workers, doctors, and patients alike. Things moved rapidly once the 1994 decision was handed
The National Organization for Women Foundation. “NOW vs. Scheidler: The Complete
Story.” <http://now.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/NOW-v-Scheidler-Timeline.pdf>.
192
Interview with Susan Hill by Johanna Schoen, 2009, in the Southern Oral History Program
Collection #4007, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University at North Carolina
at Chapel Hill.
191
63
down: a 1995 appeal allowed NOW to begin the exploratory process for determining
conspiratorial involvement amongst the defendants, followed by a November 1995 approval by
Judge Coar of the District Court of Illinois for NOW’s attorneys to collect depositions from
incarcerated witnesses and defendants—both named and unnamed as “conspirators in the suit”.
Additionally, “NOW immediately prepare(d) subpoenas for Paul Hill (in prison for the murders
of Dr. John Bayard Britton and NOW clinic escort James Barrett) and Rachelle "Shelley"
Shannon (in prison for the shooting of Dr. George Tiller in Kansas), among others.”193
In 1997, the prosecution successfully lobbied the federal court to “designate NOW vs.
Scheidler a class action law suit”—meaning that the reach of the prosecution could extend
beyond those initially listed as plaintiffs. NOW was now able to claim its filings were on behalf
of all clinic workers and patients seeking abortions under the protections and provisions laid out
in Roe v. Wade.194 Judge Coar “certif(ied) NOW as the class representative of not only all NOW
members but all women ‘whose rights to the services of women's health centers in the United
States at which abortions are performed have been or will be interfered with by defendants'
unlawful activities.’”195 Building on the momentum NOW had since garnered, Judge Coar ruled
on September 23, 1997, that if NOW successfully argued their case, Joseph Scheidler, Randall
Terry, and all other listed co-conspirators would be able to be held responsible for all actions
undertaken by the Pro-Life Action Network.196 All of these steps forward brought Hill and NOW
to Chicago for oral arguments in federal court—for what they hoped would not just be a victory
for the suit, but a concrete action with lasting implications for abortion providers.
The National Organization for Women Foundation. “NOW vs. Scheidler: The Complete
Story.” <http://now.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/NOW-v-Scheidler-Timeline.pdf>.
194
Ibid.
195
Ibid.
196
Ibid.
193
64
Chicago
The bulk of legal argument and lower court rulings for the paramount decision of
NOW vs. Scheidler were handled during a particularly extended, harsh winter in Chicago,
Illinois, in 1998. McCoy Faulkner, still traveling full time on rotation to each of Hill’s
clinics as a security advisor, accompanied Hill to the major oral arguments and testimony
days, as both a witness and bodyguard. “There’s no winter like a Chicago winter,” he
recalled in a 2016 interview, “it just fit the mood of the case, you know, in many ways.
Just miserable.”197 By the time the case was being heard before the Supreme Court, Hill
had completed close to twelve hours of testimony through depositions, taken the witness
stand upwards of four times, and spent incalculable hours documenting and compiling all
potentially useful interactions with anti-choice groups.
“We were advised by many attorneys to drop the suit,” Hill remembered, “we were
advised that it just was going to be long and drawn out or whatever… And so I talked to Ellie
[Smeal] about that at some length, and she said, ‘Well, what do you want to do?’ And I said,
‘We’re going to keep going.’ I didn’t know it was going to be twenty-one years, but I thought,
‘We’ve got to hang in there,’ because there was nobody else who would do it. And I thought it
changed a lot of what was going on in the movement because Scheidler really got pretty much
defanged by being bound to the lawsuit. He couldn’t do all the same things he had done.”198 In
response, Schoen agreed, “That in itself is a value of the lawsuit, rather than just this idea that
197
Interview with McCoy Faulkner by Justine Orlovsky-Schnitzler, 2016, in the Southern Oral
History Program Collection #4007, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University at
North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
198
Interview with Susan Hill by Johanna Schoen, 2009, in the Southern Oral History Program
Collection #4007, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University at North Carolina
at Chapel Hill.
65
you have to win it”—to which Hill concluded, “It wasn’t always for a win. Sometimes it was to
just get them calmed down.”199 This sentiment—that NOW vs. Scheidler if perhaps unstable long
term as a RICO ruling was useful purely from the standpoint of “defanging” anti-choice
leaders—radically shifted how Hill as a plaintiff approached the stand. “I guess what I’m
saying,” she told Schoen in 2009, “…I had this theory that if you let them, they’ll [anti-choicers)
hang themselves, if you can stand it, that they’ll literally twist in the wind because they just get
full of themselves and then they do really stupid things. And that’s what they were doing [during
NOW vs. Scheidler].”200
The Chicago trial work lasted close to three months, during which Hill commuted daily
from her hotel room into the Illinois State Courthouse. “Joe Scheidler and I always talked to each
other before hand,” Hill told Schoen. “I knew about his children. He knew about my family. He
knew about when my sister died. The only one that wasn’t friendly, and I kept trying to do it,
was Randall Terry and that’s because he was just wild. He was just too wild to have a
conversation with, but Scheidler, he and his wife were always very friendly. His attorneys would
always ask me about things in my personal life. But you know, you’re with them for years. You
get to know them. You just get to know them.”201 The blurred lines between friend and foe in
the context of agonizing and seemingly endless legal involvement served to further highlight the
struggle of NOW’s attorneys to paint Scheidler as someone who dealt in conspiracy. “I think he
really was a believer, a mean believer,” Hill said of Scheidler, “but he was a believer. And I
think he didn’t realize the law and they didn’t have lawyers hanging out with them all the time.
199
Interview with Susan Hill by Johanna Schoen, 2009, in the Southern Oral History Program
Collection #4007, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University at North Carolina
at Chapel Hill.
200
Ibid.
201
Ibid.
66
And so I think he just thought they had God’s will and they could do whatever they wanted to. I
don’t know if that’s conspiracy or not, even if the end result was the same for us clinic
workers.”202
Closing arguments for the trial were presented on April 15, 1998.203 On April 20, 1998,
the verdict was announced—NOW and Hill had won what had extended into a near twelve-year
legal entanglement. The federal jury unanimously found 12-0 that there was reasonable proof of
a national conspiracy amongst anti-choice activists to deny access to abortion as healthcare while
simultaneously stripping patients, workers, and doctors, of liberties afforded to them not only in
the Constitution but also in decisions like Roe. Scheidler, the Pro-Life Action Network, and all
other listed co-defendants were formally charged with racketeering, with the further prescription
they, “should be held liable for triple damages for the harm their violent acts caused to women's
health clinics.”204
Twelve years of litigation had yielded a result at first thought impossible: the extension of
RICO into the realm of non-financial gain. The tenacity of Hill as a plaintiff and bridge between
the political arm of reproductive healthcare in the United States and reproductive healthcare in
practice had created a formidable prosecution. While Hill would ultimately face federal court and
Scheidler again in the new millennium, the initial months following the 1998 decision would be
filled with optimism and a renewed sense of commitment to advocacy on behalf of clinics
nationwide. In reflecting on her time at court and the fever of victory with Johanna Schoen, Hill
202
Interview with Susan Hill by Johanna Schoen, 2009, in the Southern Oral History Program
Collection #4007, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University at North Carolina
at Chapel Hill.
203
The National Organization for Women Foundation. “NOW vs. Scheidler: The Complete
Story.” <http://now.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/NOW-v-Scheidler-Timeline.pdf>.
204
Ibid.
67
summed up her experience thusly: “My father was a good teacher about it, because having been
a good athlete, he knew that the best way to beat them was to just keep on going. And he would
say that to me all the time when we were having these things. And he’d say, ‘Don’t get mad.
Just get even. Be there. Be the last one standing and you will have won.’ And he was right.”205
205
Interview with Susan Hill by Johanna Schoen, 2009, in the Southern Oral History Program
Collection #4007, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University at North Carolina
at Chapel Hill.
68
Conclusion
On February 28, 2006, the Supreme Court formally ended nearly twenty years of backand-forth litigation between the National Organization for Women and Joseph Scheidler. Though
the initial victory of 1998 had survived appeal challenges filed by Scheidler in 2002 and 2004,
the 2006 decision effectively shut the lid on RICO as a viable, long-term solution to anti-choice
demonstrations and their effect on clinics and their patients.206 In response to the conclusion of
such a protracted legal battle, NOW’s then-president Kim Gandy wrote, “Today the U.S.
Supreme Court issued a ruling that could add to the increasing difficulty women face in
obtaining reproductive health services. If the Court's 8-0 decision in Scheidler, et al., v. National
Organization for Women (NOW), et al. and Operation Rescue v. NOW, et al. ushers in a return
to clinic violence in the United States, NOW stands ready to fight in every jurisdiction.”207
Just three years after that decision, another shooting would rock the nation. On May 31,
2009, Dr. George Tiller was fatally shot in the head by Scott Roeder during a service at Tiller’s
parish in Wichita, Kansas.208 At the time of his murder, he was one of the last remaining
providers of late-term abortions in the country—and had helmed the Women’s Health Care
Services clinic for close to ten years. Just two days after his death, Hill appeared on Keith
Olbermann’s NBC program to discuss the state of fear in which abortion providers lived. When
asked if she would be able to attend the funeral of Tiller, a friend for nearly twenty-five years,
Hill hesitated before responding, “We are still assessing the security risk…and unfortunately,
I’ve been in this field for thirty-five years, and I’ve been to several funerals of doctor who’ve
The National Organization for Women Foundation. “NOW vs. Scheidler: The Complete
Story.” <http://now.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/NOW-v-Scheidler-Timeline.pdf>.
207
Ibid.
208
Davey, Monica; Stump, David. “Abortion Doctor Shot to Death in Kansas Church.” 31 May
2009. <http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/01/us/01tiller.html?pagewanted=all>.
206
69
been killed.”209 Her voice was heavy, and thick with emotion as she added, “He saw his job as a
gynecologist to take care of the needs of women…and he believed that they were able to make a
decision with ample consent…he believed women were smart enough and understood their lives
enough to be able to make that decision.”210
The murder of Dr. Tiller cut Hill deeply. McCoy Faulkner recalled her feeling genuinely
downtrodden and pessimistic about the future of reproductive healthcare in the United States,
combined with her unignorably failing health. “I wish he hadn’t been shot at all—but especially
not before she died,” Faulkner said. “That death really affected her personally.”211 Her own
battle with breast cancer began to take center stage by the end of 2009, limiting her travel
schedule and frustrating her efforts to stay on the front lines of the abortion debate. Nevertheless,
she persisted in her role for the National Women’s Health Organization, while continuing to run
several clinics.
Writing for the Feminist Majority’s blog in 2010, Michael Kort connected the last years
of Hill’s life with the death of Tiller: “When Susan Hill was operated on for breast cancer
several years ago, she didn’t recognize the name nurses called out as she emerged from
anesthesia. ‘That’s because I was admitted under an alias,’ she recalled last year, shortly after her
longtime friend Dr. George Tiller was murdered by an anti-abortion extremist… the alias was
necessary because a threat against Hill’s life had popped up on the Internet the day before her
surgery. ‘That’s how you’re forced to live—sort of in a box,’ said Hill, speaking of herself as
“Susan Hill on the Tiller Assassination and Anti-Choice Violence.” RH Reality Check RHRC
Media. <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GwrokQ99gzg>.
210
Ibid.
211
Interview with McCoy Faulkner by Justine Orlovsky-Schnitzler, 2016, in the Southern Oral
History Program Collection #4007, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University at
North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
209
70
well as other abortion providers nationwide who continue to offer a full range of reproductive
options to women despite harassment and terrorist acts. ‘But you also have to get up and live
your life. I refuse to live in fear. I refuse to be intimidated by them.’”212 Until the end, Hill lived
according to her principles—an unwavering, uncompromising servant to the needs of women
and the most vulnerable, continually presenting herself a legal barrier to restrictions and antichoice pushback.
When she passed away in 2010 at the age of 61 in Raleigh, anti-choice activists lit
candles in celebration of her demise. Her brother, Dan Hill, told the LA Times in the week
following her death, “She's the only person I knew who wore a bulletproof vest to work or was
supposed to wear one to work. People really wanted to kill her, and she never flinched."213 The
same day that article went to print, Joseph Scheidler—Hill’s opposition in her landmark Supreme
Court case NOW vs. Scheidler—posted in his blog for the Pro-Life Action League: “Susan and I
have a long history, as she was one of the abortionists who got the League all tangled up in NOW
v. Scheidler. It seems that I was always picketing and protesting at Susan’s mills. After all, she
was managing twelve at one time… The last time I saw Susan was on the steps of the United
States Supreme Court. She had aged, as had I, and it wasn’t the same couple who had battled it
out on Nightline or joked during the deposition. Here were two older people with had some
strange memories to review… I spent time with Susan Hill and never disliked her despite what
she did for a living. I always felt sorry for her and prayed for her. Besides running a dozen
clinics, later down to four, and now none, she was responsible for the deaths of 400,000 pre-born
“The Brave Life of Abortion Provider Susan Hill.” The Feminist Majority Foundation. 16
February 2010. <https://feminist.org/blog/index.php/2010/02/16/the-brave-life-of-abortionprovider-susan-hill>.
213
Friedman, Leah. “Susan Hill dies at 61; women’s rights advocate.” LA Times. 8 February
2010. < http://articles.latimes.com/2010/feb/08/local/la-me-susan-hill8-2010feb08>.
212
71
babies. I just hope Susan got saved.”214 Years of litigation had softened Scheidler to some
degree: while he still expressed the sentiment that he believed Hill was directly responsible for
the “death of 400,000 pre-born babies,” her untimely death from breast cancer was jolting. More
than twenty years of forced legal intimacy between Hill and anti-choice extremists ended that
winter. Reproductive rights groups such as NARAL Pro-Choice North of Carolina quietly
marked Hill’s passing with press releases to their mailing lists, and, without a moment to pause,
the abortion clinics she had dedicated her life to opening and defending soldiered onward under
new leadership.
What, then, is the lesson of the NOW vs. Scheidler entanglement? Does the overruling in
2008 indicate failure on the part of clinic owners and legal plaintiffs alike? I argued in the
opening of my thesis that the work of clinic owners like Hill were crucial to the 1994 successful
filing of the case—and that holds true in both a historical and social context. The eventual
overruling was a much a sign of the political climate in which the decision was being reexamined as an indication of the strength of the racketeering argument itself. Furthermore, the
life and work of Susan Hill is no less valuable because of the overruling: as a veteran of the
reproductive rights industry, she was as aware as anyone that the long march toward accessibility
and freedom of choice was just that—a long march, and not a sprint. NOW vs. Scheidler
represents a shift in legal strategy on the part of reproductive rights advocates, but does not
equally symbolize failure. Rather, the decision of Hill to stand up under twenty years of litigation
and pressure is a testament to the unbreakable will of those intimately involved in abortion care
in the United States.
214
Scheidler, Joseph. “Susan Hill Dead at 61.” < https://prolifeaction.org/2010/susanhill/>.
72
Reproductive rights remain one of the most contentious intersections of political and
social interests in the United States. While NARAL Pro-Choice America’s polling data suggests
nearly seven in ten Americans support the maintenance of the Roe decision, the ruling has been
fought nearly every step of the way. Susan Hill occupied a crucial role in the preservation of
abortion healthcare: she was willing to integrate her unwavering belief in a fundamental and
intrinsic right to bodily autonomy into every step of her personal and professional life, at great
risk to her own safety. Seven in ten Americans may believe that Roe should remain the law of
the land, but far fewer are willing to get directly involved in the preservation of said law.
Without activists like Susan Hill, a far bleaker reality would exist for those seeking to terminate
a pregnancy in the United States. Though the setback of NOW vs. Scheidler ultimately reaching
an unfavorable conclusion for the National Organization for Women was certainly disheartening,
Hill had been through enough legal entanglement to know that pendulum always swings back to
the side of justice and accountability—and that she was not alone in her fight to ensure access to
reproductive healthcare services.215
This thesis is situated between personal recollection and legal history—built on the
foundations laid by dedicated researchers like Dr. Johanna Schoen. Hill’s story is not exemplary
of every clinic owner in the United States—but it does stand in sharp contrast to the narratives
that gloss over the work of those involved in operating clinics. Hill’s involvement in NOW vs.
Scheidler not only formed a crucial part of the prosecution, but also illustrated her commitment
to seeing reproductive rights accessible in practice. This commitment did not exist in a
vacuum—as my thesis demonstrates, operating clinics was a 24/7 job, emotionally taxing at best
215
Interview with Susan Hill by Johanna Schoen, 2008, in the Southern Oral History Program
Collection #4007, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University at North Carolina
at Chapel Hill.
73
and exhausting and frightening at worst. This thesis remains a testament to the strength of
owners like Hill, building and maintaining literal and symbolic structures to support abortion as
healthcare in the post-Roe v. Wade era.
As it stands in 2017, Hill’s clinic established in Jackson, Mississippi, continues to operate
as the sole abortion provider the whole of the state, working in constant and direct defiance to
those who seek to shutter its doors permanently. Painted almost garishly pink, the building is
often draped with handmade signs proclaiming in glitter and gold that the clinic will remain
open, no matter the cost. Hill herself favored pink—a theme that emerged frequently in
discussions with McCoy Faulkner. “She was a prissy feminist,” he remembered, “She was not
your normal pro-choice feminist. She was flamboyant. Immaculately dressed. She loved pink
and pearls.”216 Though the clinic’s design choice occurred after Hill’s hands-on involvement
with the building, one cannot help but see a sliver of Susan’s impact splashed across the walls of
the Jackson Women’s Health Organization—a prissy, flamboyant structure standing against a
constant barrage of anti-choice attacks, and never buckling under the weight.
216
Interview with McCoy Faulkner by Justine Orlovsky-Schnitzler, 2016, in the Southern Oral
History Program Collection #4007, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University at
North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
74
Acknowledgments
First and foremost, I wish to thank the UNC History Department for structuring such an
inclusive, intensive academic program in which to nurture and grow ambitious projects. To that
end, I thank Professor Brett Whalen for managing my honors seminar, providing editing and
structural advice, and being a constant source of enthusiasm when mine was spent.
Professor John Sweet, my thesis advisor, deserves near endless praise for employing the
most terrifying and disarming method of academic coaching: “You’ll be fine, I’m not worried
about you.” Indeed, I was (but I wouldn’t have been without him). For putting up with me for
several years now, I humbly offer my gratitude.
I also wish to thank Professor Katherine Turk, my generous second reader and the reason
I was able to take such a monumental research weekend in Boston. I am honored to have had
such a devoted and supportive thesis board.
Without the work of Dr. Johanna Schoen at Rutgers University, it is safe to say my
project simply would not exist. Her friendship with Susan Hill and lifelong dedication to the
history of reproductive rights in this country is a testament to the indomitable will of those who
work in this field. For allowing me to access her yet-unpublished interviews with Hill through
the UNC Southern Oral History Program, I am forever in her debt. Jaycie Vos at the Southern
Oral History Program, too, helped me navigate the wealth of resources provided and make sense
of the interviews in front of me.
McCoy Faulkner of Ipas in Durham allowed me to conduct two monumental interviews
regarding his life and relationship with Susan Hill in 2016, and I will never be able to offer
enough praise toward him.
75
Finally, in no particular order, I wish to thank Sarah Hogg of NARAL Pro-Choice NC
(for pointing me in the right direction); the Duke Rubenstein Library and staff (for
encouragement and archival research); the Boyatt Program at UNC (for the means to travel to
Boston); the Harvard Schlesinger Library for Women’s History (for the exhaustive NOW
records); my parents and sister (for everything I am); Nicole (you know what for) and Max
(rewrites, reading, ego boosts and deflates as needed).