Dr. Mildred Jefferson Dies at 84

One of the bright lights of the pro-life movement died Friday. Dr. Mildred Jefferson, former head of National Right to Life, a pro-life physician, and ardent defender of the unborn served in so many ways. Feminists for Life ran an article honoring that reads in part:

Regarding her own career, Jefferson asserted, "I am at once a physician, a citizen, and a woman, and I am not willing to stand aside and allow this concept of expendable human lives to turn this great land of ours into just another exclusive reservation where only the perfect, the privileged, and the planned have the right to live."

Dr. Jefferson, who called the pro-life movement "second only to the abolitionist movement in the profound change it has brought about in American thinking," helped to found the National Right to Life Committee, which she served both as president and as a member of the board. She was a founding member, past president, and board member of the Value of Life Committee of Massachusetts and Massachusetts Citizens for Life, and headed the Right to Life Crusade.

Jefferson also encouraged pro-life college and university students to organize. "If I had my way," she said, "there would be a pro-life group on every college campus here in the United States and in its territories.... I hope that wherever you [students] have a department of women's studies or black studies that you will have a corresponding pro-life movement."

Please pray for the repose of the soul of this pro-life hero. I had the great blessing of meeting and having dinner with her years ago when Bishop Thomas Welsh invited pro-life leaders to an event honoring her. I was humbled in her presence. I'm reminded of what Henry Hyde once said:

When the time comes as it surely will, when we face that awesome moment, the final judgment, I've often thought, as Fulton Sheen wrote, that it is a terrible moment of loneliness. You have no advocates, you are there alone standing before God – and a terror will rip through your soul like nothing you can imagine. But I really think that those in the pro-life movement will not be alone. I think there will be a chorus of voices that have never been heard in this world but are heard beautifully and clearly in the next world – and they will plead for everyone who has been in this movement. They will say to God, 'Spare him because he loved us,' – and God will look at you and say not, 'Did you succeed?' but 'Did you try?'

Certainly Dr. Jefferson was not alone on Friday when she faced the Author of all life. She was surrounded by the little ones for whom she so eloquently spoke, and I have no doubt they spoke for her.