On March 18, 2023, I was scheduled to interview Heather Booth.  I was nervous but knew I was prepared.  I sat at my desk ready to go but I had not heard back from Ms. Booth after I sent my confirmation email, something not the norm for the communication I had been having with her.  The minutes ticked and I got more nervous but finally we worked it out and I was “sitting” next to Heather Booth on Zoom. She arrived sitting in a room that looked like an office. There was a quilt strung behind her but I could see the rows of bookshelves off to the side.  She wore a blue shirt and wrapped herself in a quilt around her waist explaining to me that it was cold there. I was still nervous but she was very welcoming and interested in what I had to say.

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Ms. Booth was thoughtful in every answer she gave. I learned about her childhood and how Judaism informed her work. She shared recommendations of her favorite feminist literature which included Bev Grant’s "We Were There", Alice Echol’s Daring to Be Bad, Mary Wollstonecraft's 1792 A Vindication of the Rights of Woman and Betty Friedan’s book, The Feminine Mystique which identified the problem without a name, that people didn’t even discuss how women were often not treated as equal. We shared our own definitions of feminism, a concept I feel is misunderstood. We both believe feminism is about equality. She shared, “I think feminism means that women as well as men and all people should be treated equally and have equal opportunity and treated with dignity and respect in the society.” I found myself nodding in agreement through her entire answer.

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She shared stories of what life was like for women before Roe v. Wade, abortion, the marches (at which time she shared with me the pink knitted “pussy” hat she wore at the marches) and demonstrations she participated in and, in many instances, was arrested at.  Booth shared a particularly interesting study she was a part of where they looked at significant responses by faculty members to their students, finding an overwhelming significant response to male students over female students. “In almost every aspect of life,” Booth told me, “Women weren’t treated equally with men and it's one of the many reasons that led to a women’s movement in the 1960s and 70s.” 

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We talked about the difference between the reproductive justice movement then and now and Ms. Booth explained that the difference is the opposition. In the 1960s, there was not an organized, funded, visible opposition to reproductive freedom. She told me it has become a partisan political issue today; right wing republican operatives made an arrangement with evangelical churches to provide the infrastructure and funding if they provided the people. The women’s movement and the increased power of women brought attention to the issues in general and conversations about women’s reproductive freedom. Even President Bush’s family, Booth noted, was pro women’s reproductive freedom and sat on the board of Planned Parenthood. It was interesting to learn that less than 5% of Planned Parenthood’s services are actually related to abortion. Planned Parenthood had become the largest provider of healthcare for women and still are. She said that if you asked the public if a politician should come between a woman and her doctor on this most intimate decision of their life, almost 70% of the population will say “no”. The same goes for overturning Roe v. Wade for every population except white evangelicals. “It’s true for Catholics, it's true for Jews, it’s true for mainline Protestants, it’s true in every region of the country,” she said. The fight hasn’t changed but the access and political fight around it has.  She made an incredibly pointed statement that really hit home for me.  She said, “What hasn’t changed is the need and making something illegal does not change the need.” Such a simple concept, yet so unrealized.  She went on to say that the majority of people who have an abortion already have children, and what that means is they know what it takes to bring a child into this world. And they know whether or not they are ready or not to do that one more time. This was powerful for me because those who oppose the right to choose often paint women who seek an abortion as careless, selfish and uneducated.

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To document on paper all of the remarkable and meaningful quotes from this interview would take many pages.  Everything she said was interesting and important in today's world.  I appreciate the fact that she is Jewish and I was able to ask about her Jewish experience.  About Judaism, she spoke about how her family had “family council” discussions on family decisions. I connected to this with my own family.  “I had the great good fortune of being born into a really loving family and my folks and my brothers taught me how to both accept and give love. My folks believed in making this a better world and being a good person,” she told me. She explained that she was brought up with what she thought were traditional Jewish values where Judaism and social justice “were so intertwined I couldn’t tell where one began and one ended.” She cited a passage from Deuteronomy in the Bible: “Justice, justice thou shalt pursue.”  Then she passionately told me that, “It says it twice because it’s that important.”

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I have been struck during our studies of the Civil Rights Movement by the actions some people took to stand up for justice and equality.  I was curious if she had ever felt what she was doing was not worth the risk.  Her answer was as I expected it would be.  She told me, “It was frightening to think not only would I be risking my own life but I also might be risking the lives of those I lived with or those who were working on a shared project and I was very frightened about that. In fact, the family that I lived with, the Hawkins family, four members of the Hawkins family were later killed…I very much wanted to live but if that was the risk we had to take in order to struggle for freedom, I was willing to take that risk.” I had a clear sense this was a remarkable generation of young adults. And when she shared some black and white photographs of her in Mississippi, I had no doubt this was the case.  

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I was also struck by her answer to my question of whether she has ever had to ask for help. She did not hesitate for one second and responded “All the time!” What she said next did surprise me a little. She confessed that, “I am a pretty insecure person. I'm never sure I know enough or can do enough or I’m smart enough and most of society tells us you’re not good enough, you’re not pretty enough, you’re not smart enough, you’re not enough. And what I’ve learned is when we act with others, we find a way and we learn by doing it and so I always ask for help.” We continued with this conversation with Ms. Booth connecting my question to our conversation.  She told me, “And in a way, you are asking for my help in completing this project and I am agreeing to it because I am asking for your help in carrying on this struggle because the real reason to learn history, I believe, is so we can change it and make it better. And, so, I ask for your help. You are the future. I am 77 now. I was active when I was a young teenager and you are now part of the group that will make the change in the future. So, I am grateful to you for doing this report, for having this study, for being so thoughtful about it.”

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When we got to the discussion of today and I expressed the hopelessness my generation feels, Ms. Booth seemed to get more emotional. “I think the worst legacy of this moment is the diminished hope that change is possible, that we can make a difference. If you don’t have the hope you don’t even try,” she vented. She went on to say that we need to be agents of hope and reiterated her belief in the power we have when we come together. “When we organize, I saw it in Mississippi, I saw it around Jane, I have seen it around an advancement of freedoms in many arenas.  When we organize, we have changed this world and if we continue to organize we will change this world.” 

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Ms. Booth believes in our generation’s ability to continue the fight for justice and equality but she insists it must be done with love at the center. She sees a source of hope in people doing projects like this one and taking action. We are going to be the agents of hope, she told me. I see her as a source of hope for our generation and Ms. Booth confirmed my feelings. She told me, “I try to tell my story because I believe it’s one of things that can give people hope. We were able to change the laws and make it so that for almost 50 years women were able to have this most intimate freedom in our lives to decide when, or whether, or with whom we had a child. Now, we face a backlash and the only way to respond to stop that loss of freedom is to take action together. To tell the stories. To recruit others. To raise the funds. To show up at the activities and to organize.” It was powerful to hear it in her own voice. We cannot count on our politicians; we do not control them, she told me.  The one thing we control, she continued, is ourselves. “And so,” she said, “the question will be what will you do and what actions you will take?  You’re writing this wonderful report, but are you in an organization? Will you show up at whatever the next demonstration is (as she waved her pink knitted "pussy" hat at me)? Will you speak out? Will you recruit others? Will you talk to people? Will you engage to say let’s take that step even when we don’t know? Even when we may be frightened? Because together, we can make this a better world.” 

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She summed up her wisdom with the two lessons she learned that were most important. “When you take action you can change the world” and “we stand up to illegitimate authority” are those two lessons.

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This was a great interview. I was prepared and Ms. Booth made asking questions easy.  She was accessible and open with her life and experiences.  She commended me on my preparation and interest and welcomed any question I had. It was nice knowing that she had done these interviews thousands of times before and knew her role in the process. I felt extremely lucky to have had the opportunity to meet someone like Ms. Booth. Her life experiences are awe inspiring and her passion remains as potent as ever.  I know that we are all “living” but her life has been so remarkable.

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My questions were precise which made her answers easy to compare to what I had previously discovered.  She talked about so many things I had learned during my research and it was a cool experience to “hear” history in addition to researching history.  I already knew this to be true but, after Ben Midler and Sandy speaking about the Holocaust, I was reminded how much more powerful history is when told by the person who has experienced it. Speaking with Heather Booth was exactly that. She was there. She did the work. She was only one year older than I am now.