Chicana civil rights activist Graciela Olivarez was born this day in 1928. In 1970, she became the first woman and first Latina graduate of Notre Dame Law School, despite never graduating high school. 
Olivarez was a charter member of the National Organization for Women. Abortion advocacy — conspicuously absent from the group’s charter — wasn’t adopted til 1967, only after heated debate. But Olivarez continued to practice a belief in the indivisibility of all human rights.
Her accomplishments were numerous. She headed the Arizona Office of Economic Opportunity, Food for All, the Mexican American Legal Defense Fund, and as director of the federal Community Services Administration in the late 1970s, she was...
...the highest-ranking Hispanic woman in President Jimmy Carter's administration. Prior to that, in 1972, she was appointed vice chair of the U.S. Commission on Population Growth and the American Future.
Her view on this "matter of life & death," she asserted, shouldn’t have been brushed aside. She said anyone who considered the unborn child "a mass of cells" to witness an abortion procedure, as she had. She prophetically detailed the harms of making abortion more accessible:
"Advocacy by women for legalized abortion on a national scale is so anti-women’s liberation &freedom that it flies in the face of what some are trying to accomplish thru the women’s movement, namely, equality — equality means equal sharing of responsibilities by men and women...”
“A more serious question is the kind of future we all have to look forward to if men are excused either morally or legally from their responsibility for participation in the creation of life.”
“To talk about the 'wanted' and the 'unwanted' child smacks too much of bigotry and prejudice. Many of us have experienced the sting of being 'unwanted' by certain segments of our society...”
"I am not impressed nor persuaded by those who express concern for the low-income woman who may find herself carrying an unplanned pregnancy and for the future of the unplanned child who may be deprived of the benefits of a full life as a result of the parents' poverty...”
“...because the fact remains that in this affluent nation of ours, pregnant cattle and horses receive better health care than pregnant poor women. The poor cry out for justice and equality, and we respond with legalized abortion...”
“As long as we view abortion as a solution, we will continue to avoid facing the real issue — that abortion treats the symptom and neglects the disease. When all of our people have access to the same benefits, advantages, and opportunities, abortion will not be necessary."
As she predicted nearly half a century ago, the increased availability of abortion has compounded, rather than cured, the complex evils of sexism, racism, and economic injustice. It is long past the time for taking her prophetic protest to heart, but better late than never.
