| WASHINGTON
- September 22 - NARAL Pro-Choice America, the leading national advocate for personal privacy and a woman’s right to choose, today announced that its President, Kate Michelman, will resign and become President Emeritus following the March for Freedom of Choice on April 25, 2004 in Washington, DC, stepping down from day-to-day management of the organization in order to focus on pressing family concerns and dedicate herself to the work of electing a pro-choice President.
In a statement, Ms. Michelman said that:
“My family needs more of my attention than my current responsibilities enable me to give them, and after nearly two decades of pouring my heart and soul into this organization, I must now put them first. I made the decision to step down from the day to day work of running a large national organization so that I could both meet those family responsibilities and devote myself actively to the most urgent priority facing the pro-choice movement – electing a President who will protect our right to choose.
The next four years will almost certainly see at least two Supreme Court vacancies. If George W. Bush is allowed to fill those seats, it will mean the end of reproductive privacy and the end of Roe v. Wade. I intend to do everything I can to see that does not happen.
Therefore, after leading our March for Freedom of Choice – a vital effort to remind the President and Congress that America’s pro-choice majority will not let our privacy be taken away – I will step down from the Presidency of this organization, and focus my public efforts on making sure pro-choice Americans understand just how high the stakes are.
NARAL Pro-Choice America’s true impact is measured not in dollars raised, elections won or nominations defeated, but in the countless women whose lives have been saved and children whose lives have been enriched by our work. I would gladly have given the last twenty years for any one of them. To have been able to touch so many is a privilege beyond any I could have imagined.”
Sally Patterson, Chair of the NARAL Pro-Choice America Board of Directors, said: “We’re grateful to Kate for everything she’s done to build this organization and the pro-choice movement. We’ve begun a national search for a new President with the stature and accomplishment to build on that work and take us into the future. It will be very difficult to fill Kate’s shoes.”
Kate Michelman has served as President of NARAL Pro-Choice America, since 1985, catapulting the organization to prominence as the nation's premier reproductive rights group. Under her leadership, NARAL Pro-Choice America has transformed the political debate and positioned a woman's freedom to choose as a fundamental American liberty. Kate herself coined the question that now defines the pro-choice movement: “Who Decides? Politicians or women themselves?”
Michelman is widely credited with helping the pro-choice movement to defend legal abortion against attack while developing a proactive agenda focused on defining the freedom to choose as a fundamental American value. She worked to broaden the conversation of choice to encompass the full range of reproductive options, including choosing legal abortion, preventing unwanted pregnancy and bearing healthy children.
Early in her professional career, Michelman was a specialist in early childhood development, with a particular emphasis on developmentally disabled children. Building on her work with special-needs children in rural Pennsylvania on the edge of Appalachia, she developed a model multi-disciplinary diagnostic treatment program for developmentally disabled preschool children and their families that now serves as a model across the nation.
Michelman, who first honed her organizing skills in the civil-rights movement, became concerned about reproductive freedom after her own humiliating experience with a pre-Roe v. Wade abortion in 1970, which required her to obtain the consent of the husband who had deserted their family as well as a hospital panel comprised entirely of men.
Prior to joining NARAL Pro-Choice America in 1985, Michelman was executive director of Planned Parenthood in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, where she expanded the range of reproductive health services available in the area. She also trained medical students and residents in child development as a Clinical Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychiatry at Pennsylvania State University School of Medicine.
Michelman is married and has three daughters and five grandchildren.
###
|
