A Catholic priest denounced him as “the devil incarnate” and some feminists, including Betty Friedan, called him a chauvinist, a CIA agent and worse.
Bill Baird, 80, pauses by a display showing him as a notable prisoner of the old Charles Street Jail, currently in the lobby of the Liberty Hotel, in Boston.
SPRINGFIELD — He won three U.S. Supreme Court cases, served time in eight jails and aroused the wrath of the Catholic Church and the feminist movement.
At 80, Bill Baird remains a crusader for birth control and reproductive rights, giving speeches at colleges, churches and rallies.
And yes, he’s on Facebook too.
“I was put on this planet to be a social reformer – to fight for other people’s rights,” said Baird, a Brooklyn native and founder of the Pro Choice League who moved to Western Massachusetts seven years ago.
With the 40th anniversary of the Roe v. Wade abortion rights ruling on Tuesday, Baird’s role in that landmark case is once again in the spotlight.
In a challenge to the state’s birth control laws, Baird gave a speech at Boston University in 1967, then gave a female student a box of contraceptive foam he purchased at Zayre’s in Hadley. He was quickly arrested, charged with “crimes against chastity” and served 36 days at the notorious Charles Street Jail.
At the time, birth control was legal only for married couples, a restriction Baird appealed as a violation of privacy rights. Five years later, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed with Baird, ruling in the case Eisenstadt v. Baird that unmarried people had the same right to birth control as married couples.
“I knew that if we could get the birth control law repealed on privacy grounds, we could get abortion too,” Baird said. “And we succeeded beyond my wildest dreams,” he added.
Indeed, the same court cited privacy rights in striking down a Texas abortion law 10 months later in Roe v. Wade, effectively legalizing abortion nationwide.
By 1979, two more Baird-filed appeals were upheld in the U.S. Supreme Court, collectively giving teenagers the right to abortion without parental consent.
For Baird, the legal battles generated more than $200,000 in legal bills, expenses that his speaking fees helped to defray.
“Ralph Nader, Dick Gregory and I were the (most in-demand) speakers; I was getting $4,000 or $5,000 a speech,” he said.
He was also making enemies – and not just the anti-abortion extremists who firebombed his Long Island, N.Y., clinic in 1979. Fifty people were inside the Hempstead facility, but no one was killed.
A Catholic priest denounced him as “the devil incarnate” and some feminists, including Betty Friedan, called him a chauvinist, a CIA agent and worse. “If I had been a woman – if my name had been Wilhelmina Baird – everything would have been different,” he said.
As much as he resents the lack of support from his fellow travelers, he appreciates the irony in the 1967 arrest that was a turning point in his career.
Boston’s notorious Charles Street Jail – where Baird says he endured lice, rats, beatings and regular threats of rape – is now the upscale Liberty Hotel at 215 Charles St. “And they offer condoms in every room,” he said. “They give the guests condoms and expensive body oils.”