Choice: UMass breathes life into the history of a local man's lifelong crusade for women's reproductive rights

By Bonnie Wells
Staff Writer

Published on December 05, 2008

It was a mob scene. On April 11, 1968, some 200 college students and Valley residents joined reproductive-rights activist Bill Baird in a demonstration outside the Zayre's department store in Hadley on the site of present-day TJ Maxx store. Len Berkman of Amherst, a professor of theater at Smith College, was there, with his young son, Jeremy, on his shoulders.

"I felt it very important that when people protested, that there be a visibility of their children," Berkman said, "because the popular notion in the 1960s was that [reproductive rights] was a hippie issue."

The issue that day was the contradiction in Massachusetts law that allowed for the sale of contraceptive products, but outlawed providing information about birth control. Three years earlier, the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Griswold v. Connecticut had legalized contraception for married people nationwide, but did not allow for advertising.

That day, Baird had walked into Zayre's and legally purchased a can of contraceptive foam and a copy of Modern Bride magazine, which carried an ad for the product. Outside, in front of the store, he showed the foam and the magazine to the crowd, challenging local police to enforce the law, including arresting the attorney general for the sales tax collected on the product.

"He spoke in a very complicated way about the contradiction in laws that made a product legal to purchase, but illegal to show," Berkman said. "Bill was pointing out the irony of that and saying that things had to change."

These 40 years later, Baird's role in the fight for reproductive rights for women is the subject of a work of historical docudrama, poised for a staged reading next week at the University of Massachusetts.

Mission possible

Baird's crusade was five years old when he staged the Zayre's protest. As the clinical director for EMKO, a birth control manufacturer, he was at a Harlem hospital in 1963 when the tragedy of back-street and home abortion attempts was brought home to him in a shocking instant. In a recent conversation, Baird, now 76 and a Pioneer Valley resident, told the story of how a blood-curdling scream brought him to a darkened corridor and a gruesome scene, involving a young black woman. "She died in my arms," he said.

Traumatized and determined, the Brooklyn native began teaching reproductive health care and distributing EMKO foam to women at drug stores and malls in the New York area. In 1964, he bought a truck and traveled around in his "Plan Van," bringing information about birth control and abortion to the poor. The same year, he established the nation's first physician-staffed non-profit birth control and abortion-referral facility in Hempstead, New York, providing free reproductive health care.

His campaign was not without cost. Baird was jailed many times for lecturing on birth control and abortion rights.

"My clinic was bombed in New York with 50 people in it; my son was beaten up," he said. "I never knew what it would mean to my family. I'm still kind of recovering."

The year before his Zayre's protest, he was arrested for speaking to a crowd of 2,500 students at Boston University. Though it resulted in a traumatic three-month stay in the Charles Street jail in Boston, the B.U. case ultimately led to the 1972 Supreme Court decision Eisenstadt v. Baird, which reversed Baird's conviction, made contraception legal for all people and paved the way for the Roe v. Wade decision, legalizing abortion, the following year.

True life drama

Baird's lifelong crusade, nearly lost in the annals of reproductive rights for women, will take center stage next week at UMass. The docudrama "Menace to Society," named for the moniker given to Baird by his opponents, is the work of a multidisciplinary team drawn from the UMass departments of history, legal studies, women's studies, English and theater.

"Working together as several different departments was challenging, difficult and frustrating sometimes, but absolutely worth it," said Emily Denison, a theater department M.F.A. student in dramaturgy. "It challenged us to really communicate with each other to meet everyone's expectations, which will make it a stronger piece."

The project started in the history department with longtime professor Joyce Berkman, executive producer of "Menace." Her roots in the quest for reproductive rights for women run deep.

"When Len and I got married in 1962, we made a compromise with my family," she said. The couple agreed to do the traditional ceremony if they could have a petition to legalize abortion next to the guest book.

In the 1970s at UMass, Berkman began teaching women's history, and was a founding member of the women's studies department in 1972. In the early 1980s she began offering a course on the history of reproductive rights, and 10 years ago, joined with two other women to form the Valley Women's History Collaborative.

Three years ago, Berkman heard Baird speak at Hampshire College. "It was spellbinding," she said. "After his lecture a bee got in my bonnet about recognizing the important role he played in women's reproductive rights."

Last year, when UMass Dean Joel Martin put out a call for proposals for a "Visioning Grant" for a multidisciplinary project, the last tumbler fell. Berkman was awarded the grant and set about assembling a team.

First the history

The 10-member research group included investigators from the history, legal studies and women's studies departments. Lori Sandhusen took an oral history from Baird, while others researched the law, women's history, the struggle for reproductive rights, the responses of the Catholic Church and organizations such as the ACLU, Planned Parenthood and the National Organization for Women.

"I was in charge of researching the Catholic voices," said Denison, who did double duty as part of the research team and as dramaturg for the project. She says no one need apologize for not knowing what the word dramaturg means.

"In general it's research and development for theater," she said. "I think of myself as an emissary between the play, the playwright, the director, the actors and the audience. A dramaturg brings them together in the most illuminating way."

A part of her responsibility as a dramaturg is to create a display in the foyer comprised by photos and documents relating to Baird's work, and to arrange for a discussion of the issues after each show. Yet another part was to filter the reams of research from the historians to the playwrights, Jeannie Hoag and Madeline Ffitch, M.F.A. students in the English department.

"At the beginning of the project, Joyce gave Madeline and me a packet of photocopied newspaper clippings; I believe they came directly from Bill and Joni Baird's archives," Hoag wrote in an email. "The packet gave us quite a bit of background information about Bill Baird's story."

"The most surprising thing about the story itself is that so many groups of people who you would think would be [Baird[']s] natural allies - Planned Parenthood, the ACLU, the women's movement - totally rejected him," said Kimberly Fuller, a Ph.D student in the history department and the project's historian. "People saw him as being too radical."

Gentle and welcoming with those in need, by all accounts Baird was fairly in-your-face when it came to the authorities. With his intimate knowledge of the continuing deaths from botched abortions, especially among poor women, Baird saw himself in a race to change the law and save lives. One of his teaching aids was a big, two-sided placard. On one side he had mounted the gruesome implements of amateur abortion. On the other, contraceptive products.

"What is so wonderful about Bill Baird is that he says it's not about men or women; it's about safety and health, about human beings and caring for other people," Fuller said.

Hoag said that another great resource was the 2006 book "Creating Choice" by David Cline, a former graduate student of Berkman's. The compilation of oral histories about the development of the women's reproductive rights movement in the Valley began in Berkman's UMass class and in the Valley Women's History Collaborative's Oral History Project. "Creating Choice" earned Cline the 2006 Tapestry Health Care Margaret Sanger Award in recognition of his contribution to the history of the struggle for reproductive health.

Then the art

Early last month Hoag met with the theater team to present the first draft of the script. Chairing the meeting in the Curtain Theater was Director Shawn LaCount, an M.F.A student in the theater department and co-founder and artistic director of Company One in Boston.

"The idea of documentary theater is something I've been attracted to for awhile," he said, adding that he had co-taught a class in the form at Tufts University four years back. "There's something about reflecting real life but rearranging the notes to make art."

Also on hand were Denison, theater faculty advisors Len Berkman from Smith and UMass dramaturgy professor Harley Erdman, as well as an ensemble of 10 student actors LaCount had cast in mid-October.

"The most satisfying moment was when we got that script," said Denison, "to see all the work that the researchers and writers had done manifested in that script."

If the actors are any indication, even that first draft was an evocative telling of the story. During a break in the "rough reading," the room crackled with actors sharing personal experiences connected with the material.

"People my age, 24, grew up with access to birth control and abortion and information," said Fuller. "I think with so many rights that are hard won, a generation later it's hard to remember how hard won they were. We think that those rights will always be there and can't be taken away, and that's simply not true."

She said the Baird story has been an inspiration to her to continue the fight. "Bill Baird gave up a lot to fight this battle. He wasn't one of the rich and powerful; he was an everyday guy. But he accomplished wonderful things."

Bill Baird will be present for a staged reading of "Menace to Society," which takes place Dec. 12 and 13 at 7:30 p.m. in Curtain Theater at UMass, located at the rear of the Fine Arts Center. Tickets are $5; $3 students and seniors, available at the Fine Arts Center Box Office at (413) 545-2511. Audience members are invited to remain after the performance for a discussion of the issues raised.