Noted physician/activist Willie Parker was in San Francisco recently explaining why he does what he does.
What Willie Parker does is regularly put his life on the line in behalf of poor women and their reproductive health. Why does he do it? "It's the right thing to do." Among other things Parker does is to fly regularly into Jackson, MS to provide abortions at the one remaining clinic where Mississippi women without power or resources can go for this constitutionally-protected health service.
His belief that it would be morally wrong not to help the women who come to him, Parker once told this writer, was rooted partially in a sermon Martin Luther King, Jr. preached on the good Samaritan (who stopped to help a stranger after others had passed him by.) "What made the good Samaritan 'good' was that instead of thinking about what might happen if he stopped to help the traveler, he thought about what would happen to the traveler if he didn't stop. I couldn't stop to weigh the life of a pre-viable or a lethally flawed fetus against the life of the woman sitting across from me."
Parker headlined an event celebrating the 43rd anniversary of Roe v Wade that was organized by Carol Joffe, PhD, of the University of California San Francisco's Bixby Center for Global Reproductive Health - and which quickly sold out.
"Most (abortion) providers keep a low profile," Joffe said in her introductory remarks; "but Willie has chosen to be very public. (Despite his multiple degrees and honors, everybody seems to call Dr. Parker 'Willie.') He is building bridges to the past and to the future." Joffe went on to speak of Parker's connections to progressive causes, faith communities and, most recently to the Black Lives Matter movement. "What he is doing," she said, "helps all women to live lives of dignity."
Parker, who treats the issue of personal danger as not worth his time to worry about, calls the anti-abortion efforts "domestic terrorism," especially with the murder of providers. The incessant efforts to overturn Roe, and passage of more and more unnecessary state laws making abortion inaccessible for women without power or resources are, he maintains, in the same "domestic terrorism" category.
So in return Parker says he tries to "radicalize" every young woman he sees in Mississippi. Since the state mandates he spend time with her, unnecessarily and repeatedly, before allowing her to have the abortion which is her constitutional right, Parker considers it only fair to put that time to best use. "I tell her, 'these people who are trying to close this clinic - they don't think you're smart enough to make your own decisions.' And I explain change will only happen if she fights for it. Then I tell her to go vote."
All of which helps explain why Willie Parker does what he does. This writer is among the uncounted others, women and men believing in humanity and justice, who give thanks.