In Memoriam: Susan Hill

By Amie Newman, Managing Editor RH reality Check

February 1, 2010 - 7:18pm

Sadly, the women's health and rights community lost a courageous, loving advocate. Susan Hill, a women's clinic owner and reproductive rights advocate, died today. Hill was the President and CEO of the National Women's Health Organization in North Carolina. From the web site of the National Organization of Women:

"She went on to open the first abortion clinic in the state of Florida and was a founding member of both the National Abortion Federation and the National Coalition of Abortion Providers."

In fact, at one time, Susan Hill owned five health centers around the country, including the now famous Jackson Women's Health Center - the last remaining health center providing abortions in Mississippi. For this, she was targeted mercilessly and violently by anti-choice activists. 

In fact, in October 2009 RH Reality Check contributor Carol Joffe wrote about Hill's mission to share the anti-choice movement's latest strategies against women's health centers: suing the cities in which the centers reside, along with the police chiefs in these regions often times. Hill was particularly afraid, Joffe wrote, because simultaneously, violence against clinics and staff at clinics seemed to be escalating in the wake of Dr. Tiller's murder: “In the old days, at least we knew what they were up to. If they were blockading us or firebombing us, we knew it. This is more insidious, more like a stealth strategy. And it is making life a living hell for the providers.” 

Hill was close friends with Dr. Tiller and remained extremely active working on behalf of clinic owners continually harrassed by anti-choice protestors: Hill served as plaintiff in over 30 federal and state lawsuits concerning abortion rights, and was a key plaintiff in the NOW v. Scheidler case that charged abortion opponents with using violence, intimidation and extortion to put women's clinics out of business. 

In an article on Salon's Broadsheet right after Dr. Tiller was murdered, Hill expressed a realistic sadness about where women who needed later term abortions would end up with Dr. Tiller gone: Hill last spoke to Dr. Tiller two weeks ago, not long after the Women's Health Center was vandalized, and she asked the 67-year-old why he didn't retire in the face of increasing harassment, after already having been shot in both arms and seen his clinic bombed. "Because I can't leave these women," he told her. "Those are the words I'm always going to remember from him. He just believed that when he left, they wouldn't get any kind of care."

Unfortunately, it seems he may have been right. I asked Hill where women who need late-term abortions can go now, and her response was bleak. "There's Warren Hern, out in Boulder, Colorado, but he doesn't go as far as Dr. Tiller went." When it comes to those "really tragic cases," Hill said the harsh truth is, "We don't know where we're going to send them."