Dr. Willie Parkers Speech at the Rashbaum-Tiller Abortion Provider Awards, June 3, 2013 Good evening.

It is a great honor to receive this recognition from Physicians for Reproductive Health. I have the highest respect for and the greatest pride at being a part of this community. To be recognized in honor of Dr George Tiller, a former Physicians for Reproductive Health board member and prior recipient of the Rashbaum Award that tonight will go to the very deserving Dr Eve Espey, makes me both proud and humble at the same time, especially in the presence of his family and friends. I say to you his family, should I receive any other recognitions , I dont think that Ill be any prouder that I am right now to be recognized in honor of Dr. Tiller. During my senior year at Berea College, I was one of two students selected to conduct literary research for Mr. Alex Haley , the author of Roots. During that wonderful experience, he shared a story with me of an experience he had with his grandfather. His grandfather said to him Boy, if you are ever out in the fields and you see a turtle sitting on a fencepost, you know that he didnt get there by himself. He had to have some help. In the spirit of that truth, I want to shine a bit of the light you are shining on a few people in the audience. Dr. Doug Laube, the current Physicians for Reproductive Health board chair, was my medical student clerkship director at the University of Iowa some 25 years ago. After choosing ob/gyn as a specialty, I decided I wanted to be like him when I grow up. I have made a valiant effort at that in most ways, with the exception of keeping my hair while aging as he has! Doug as I now call him after the inability to call him by his first name such was my respect for him, wrote letters of support for my residency application. Many of the program directors he knew personally; thus, while transporting my file between interviews at one institution, I glanced at the support letter he sent and on it he wrote to his friend in that department This guy will be super, a cant-miss candidate! So Doug, thank you for describing me so exactly in your letter, for your mentorship in launching my womens health career, and for the privilege of serving

under your leadership as president of ACOG and [board chair of] Physicians for Reproductive Health, and for being able to call you friend. My sister Earnestine flew up from our hometown of Birmingham to be with me tonight. Shes my favorite blonde. I credit her with being my first teacher in womens/human rights. I am four years older than she is, and when I was about 12 and she was eight, I was bigger, older, and male, hence I sought to exert my authority over her and she refused. I hit her, the first and last time I hit a female, and she hit me back. I hit her again harder, thinking dose response, and she responded by unleashing on me all of the blows she could muster as an 8-year-old. I learned a very important lesion that day: that if you seek to deny women their safety, human rights and dignity, its not going to happen without a fight. Thank you baby sister for that important lesson because I now conclude that understanding this led to my decision to fight along side women as they resist efforts by anyone to deny them their rights. Fast forward to last June 2012, Diane and Shannon would you stand? Diane Derzis is the owner of Jackson Womens Health Organization and Shannon Brewer is the clinic administrator there. You may recognize that Jackson Womens Health Organization is the only abortion clinic left in the state of Mississippi, which means that these two women and the staff at that clinic have been the only thing preventing the state of Mississippi from denying women their right to abortion care. I joined them in that effort as one of two doctors who travel to Mississippi to preserve that access for women there. I just wanted to acknowledge them for that important work of keeping the clinic open, because it allowed me to commit to making sure that if women can muster the courage to travel from all over the state of Mississippi under hostile circumstances to access abortion care at the clinic, that there will be someone there to provide it for them. As I accept this award, the thought that keeps going through my mind is the saying that I heard as a kid growing up in Alabama, which was that you dont get credit for doing what you

are supposed to do. Providing abortions after much soul searching came to feel like it is what Im supposed to do after understanding how important it is to the health of women, similar to Dr. Tillers realization that the women who relied on his father for this care needed him after he took over his dads practice. We who provide abortions do so because our patients need us, and thats what we are supposed to do: respond to the needs of our patients. I think that Holocaust survivor and Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel said it best: Our lives no longer belong to us alone; they belong to all those who need us desperately. So thank you for this award. I respect and accept your decision to honor me, but I do so knowing that there are many others I know who are deserving of such recognition, if not more so. I choose to view this recognition as a deeper call to champion reproductive justice within this growing community of health care providers who make reproductive rights real by providing access, and as such I will take it as a challenge to be as committed and available to the women who need me as the person was in whose name I am being honored. Thank you very much.