This is the Reverend Kearney Kirkby (b.1914—d.2002). He was a Methodist minister, and he led the Saginaw State Street United Methodist Church in Saginaw, Michigan, from 1967 to 1973.
The pre-Roe v. Wade years were marked by hundreds of preventable deaths of women annually from complications of botched abortions around the country. And it was the news of the death of a young woman from Texas that particularly unsettled Reverend Kirkby.
He responded in 1969 by becoming one of the approximately 75 members of the Michigan Clergy for Problem Pregnancy Counseling. It was modeled after a similar service started in New York in 1967. If you called their number, you’d get an answering service that would give you names and phone numbers of people like Reverend Kirkby: counselors who were open-minded and willing to discuss your options with you without judgement.
Like telephone counselors today, they read off a script. They would assess the caller’s interest in pursuing five possible courses of action with the caller. The first four were:
- marriage;
- offering the child up for adoption;
- keeping the baby;
- and abortion.
The script also had them ask questions that assessed the caller’s risk of suicide. That was the fifth possible course of action they needed to address.
They knew full well that most every woman calling them had already made up their mind to have an abortion, but they still took as much time with her as she needed.
At this time in Michigan, therapeutic abortion was only legal if it was to save the life of the mother. Most women who called had to leave the state to obtain the procedure. The MCPPC had a list of doctors in Cleveland and Chicago who were willing to perform abortions (although it was also illegal there). Each doctor was vetted by the MCPPC and deemed safe to refer their clients to.
There was some risk involved for the counselors. What they were doing was technically criminal conspiracy. But sympathetic state officials generally tolerated their activities, unless one of the women filed a complaint after being counseled (which rarely happened).
Even after Roe became the law of the land, the Reverend Kearney Kirkby continued to support abortion rights, donating money annually to NARAL and other pro-choice advocacy groups until the year he died.
Kearney is my middle name. Kearney Kirkby was my grandfather. And I promise to actively undermine and subvert the forced birth fascists of the Republican Party, who think they have the right to deprive women of their bodily autonomy, for as long as I draw breath.
My grandfather’s legacy at least deserves that.