Human rights activist marched to protect innocent
In the passing of Nellie Gray,
the founder and president of the March for Life, the nation has lost a
great human rights champion who dedicated the latter half of her 88
years to defending the most basic human right: the right to life.
For nearly 40 years, Nellie
sought to rally and unify defenders of life. She never wavered from
this goal, even this year calling upon “all grass-roots pro-lifers and
government officials to unite because any abortion is untenable.”
Nellie
first learned of abortion while reading a novel that described an
abortion in which the baby was partially delivered and his skull
crushed. That vivid picture of the brutality of abortion stayed fresh in
her mind, so it is not surprising that she, like so many of us, was
devastated when in 1973 the Supreme Court legalized abortion right up
until the moment of birth. Years later, she wrote in a letter, “By
abortion, a pregnant mother is hurt and a preborn is a torn-apart
corpse.”
Nellie’s life was characterized by service to her country. She served as a corporal in the Women's Army Corps
in World War II and earned an undergraduate business degree, a master’s
degree in economics and a law degree. She worked as a civil servant in
the Departments of State and Labor for 28 years. It was her patriotism
and an abiding sense of duty that drove her to retire from the federal government early so that she could help lead the effort to restore legal protections to the preborn.
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