Patricia MaginnisActivist, Feminist, Humanitarian Hers is a remarkable story of how a woman with neither money nor organizing ability set afire a campaign to start people looking at abortion as a human right necessary for women when pregnancy, accidental or deliberate, threatened their lives or their futures. Her birth in Ithaca, New York, the fifth child into a dysfunctional Catholic family and childhood as a struggling student in dust bowl Oklahoma hardly augured these later achievements. Essentially a free spirit, she entered a convent to pursue a life of service, but found no solace there and, later, in the army, lured by the promise of education and travel, she experienced racism and sexism rampant. When she violated southern race laws by fraternizing with a black soldier, she was sent in disgrace to the Panama base as a surgical assistant. There she witnessed how harshly women were treated in the maternity ward and later saw the practice repeated at San Francisco’s French Hospital working as a medical technician. “They were seen merely as reproductive vessels, “ she related, “and those being treated for botched abortions were considered unworthy of care.” Pat vowed “I didn’t know how, but someday, somehow, I will put an end to this abominable treatment.” She worked with Rowena Gurner and Lana Phelan to provide women with safe abortions, even though she lived under felony indictment for doing so. In 1961, they started the Citizen’s Committee for Humane Abortion Laws in California, a time when the word “abortion” was so taboo. In 1966, she set up the Association to Repeal Abortion Law in California, and in 1967 she was arrested for publishing methods of inducing abortion. Her book, The Abortion Handbook was published in 1968. By 1969, Maginnis reported that she and her co-workers had sent 12,000 women outside the country for abortions. In later years she published political and anti-war cartoons. The cartooning and limerick writing she had taken up to relieve the stress when the passion and the rage threatened to consume her. She continues today, despite the hindrance of Parkinson’s Disease, handing out copies on the street as in the old days. She is also an inveterate recycler who can’t pass a dumpster without checking for usable items. Living in an old Victorian, she now shelters abandoned cats and dogs, as well as a beehive. “From Danger to Dignity” a film made in 1995 by Dorothy Fadiman in association with KTEH TV includes Pat’s story. Proceeds from this event will go to the fund to re-open the Women’s Choice Clinic (closed this Spring due to the holdup of State payments) and to fulfill another of Pat’s goals.
Honored by the members of Oakland East Bay N.O.W. |
