Beverly Whipple: Unsung Hero of Women's Rights

Beverly Whipple: Unsung Hero of Women's Rights
08/05/2014
Fran Moreland Johns

At first glance, you would not take her for a warrior. Slim, blond, pretty with a deceptive tilt toward fragility, Beverly Whipple could be answering a call from central casting for all-American housewife. But if such an opportunity ever presented itself, Whipple laughed it out of town.

Honored recently by the National Abortion Federation with an Unsung Hero award, Whipple thanked her longtime supporters and coworkers at the Washington State women's clinics she co-founded decades ago, expressed confidence in their continuing strength and took off immediately thereafter to roam around Europe for a few months on a motorcycle. She's done this three or four times before, accompanied by husband Mike, who is equally open to exploring the world.

In what seems definitely another life, Beverly Whipple worked her way through college, earning a degree in music education. She married, taught school and had "a pretty good life." On her way to a long tenure as an unsung heroine of reproductive justice she left that life, went to Mexico to learn Spanish and held down a job driving an 18-wheeler truck. In the middle of the night, one night, the air pressure in her truck's braking system "went away," and the brakes failed. A turnout happily positioned on one downhill stretch saved truck and driver from oblivion. The experience may have persuaded her that truck driving wasn't the wisest career choice, but her love for the open road continues. She and Mike were delighted to meet fellow award winner Sarp Aksel, who sent them off with introductions to his family in Turkey.

The career choice Whipple did make has been a literal lifesaver to countless women in Washington State for more than a quarter century. In 1979, she and Deborah Lazaldi, both natives of Yakima, founded Feminist Women's Health Center in Yakima, to offer reproductive choice and healthcare. Known as Cedar River Clinics, FWHC in Yakima shares some of the innovative elements of the first Feminist Women's Health Center, founded by Carol Downer and Lorraine Rothman in 1971 in Los Angeles. Beyond providing reproductive services, the clinics empower women by involving them in their own healthcare - performing their own pregnancy tests, learning about their own bodies, joining support groups....

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