My wife, LaRee, and I first met Dr. Mildred Jefferson in 2001 in Charlotte, North Carolina where I was delivering a keynote address to the United States National Right to Life Prayer Breakfast,. I spoke about disability, euthanasia and assisted suicide. Dr. Jefferson was sitting at our table and wearing one of her trademark stylish hats. She had an air of natural dignity and depth that made me suspect that we were in the company of quiet greatness. Little did LaRee and I know at the time that she was an American history maker and ground breaker for African Americans and women.
Dr. Jefferson had been involved in the pro-Life movement since its inception and helped to establish the U.S. National Right to Life Committee (NRLC) and the American Life League (ALL). She served as an early Chairman of the board and President of the NRLC and served on the board of directors of ALL.
In 1977, Dr. Jefferson wrote:
"We come together from all parts of our land ... We come rich and poor, proud and plain, religious and agnostic, politically committed and independent. ... the tight-to-life cause is not the concern of only a special few but it should be the cause of all those who care about fairness and justice, love and compassion and liberty with law ..."*
This was the mind of Dr. Jefferson that LaRee and I had the privilege to encounter. It may sound outlandish, but I believed then (as I do now) that was in the company of someone who had been sent. At a certain moment, Dr. Jefferson slipped away and into the crowd but I felt we had been blessed by meeting her. Later I asked someone about the dignified lady in the fashionable hat.
Dr. Mildred Fay Jefferson was born in 1926 in Pittsburg, Texas to a school teacher and Methodist minister, Gutherie (Roberts) Jefferson and Reverend Millard F. Jefferson. In 1951, she was the first African American woman to graduate from Harvard Medical School. She continued to break ground by becoming the first woman surgical intern at Boston City Hospital and the first woman admitted to membership in the Boston Surgical Society. Dr. Jefferson was a skilled surgeon and Assistant Clinical Professor of Surgery at the Boston University Medical School.
Dr. Jefferson had a particular interest medical jurisprudence and medical ethics. She was known and respected across America for her pro-Life activism and was a sought after speaker.
In 2005, LaRee and I came met Dr. Jefferson again in Minneapolis. It was three months after the judicial murder of Terri Schiavo in Florida. My speech to the U.S. National Right to Life Convention was, in large part, about the killing of Terri Schiavo and its moral implications for America. After my address, Dr. Jefferson shared with us her fears about the medical and bioethical concerns facing America in the wake of the tragedy and travesty of the Schiavo case.
This past June, LaRee and I were in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, to deliver a joint address to the U.S. National Right to Life Prayer breakfast. This time we spoke about our experience with abortion, post-abortion grief, the pain of disability and suffering -- that have led to other families to considering euthanasia and assisted suicide. As I have said in previous blog entries, LaRee captivated the audience with her honest and penetrating insigh
ts.
ts.Later Dr. Jefferson approached me. The great woman had been deeply moved, particularly by LaRee's words, and urged that we speak at every opportunity. Dr. Jefferson felt that people need to hear our dual perspectives on abortion, disability and the deep soul-pain that often accompanies chronic illnesses and degenerative disabilities and can destroy individuals or families. I told Dr. Jefferson that is exactly what LaRee and I intend to do wherever we are invited.
Dr. Jefferson passed away last weekend at the age of 84 years. She will be deeply missed but her life serves as an inspiration for future activists in the pro-Life movement. Dr. Mildred Jefferson has gone home to her deep and eternal rest. She will, no doubt, meet those little ones a cruel world rejected from their mothers' wombs but now rest in the abiding and deep peace of Christ. To Dr. Mildred Fay Jefferson I dedicate this video:
Mark Pickup
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