Sunday, November 21, 1999
Right to a new life
Although no longer in charge, Barbara Willke continues to work for her political cause
BY JULIE IRWIN
The Cincinnati Enquirer
After almost 30 years at the forefront of the local anti-abortion movement, Barbara Willke retired earlier this year as chairman of Right to Life of Greater Cincinnati.
But retirement hasn't meant all rest and relaxation for the former nurse, who worked with her husband, Jack, to help found the Right to Life movement both locally and nationally. The Enquirer caught up with her recently to see what she's doing now.
QUESTION: What have you been up to since your formal retirement?
ANSWER: I'm just back from a week in California with my grandkids. I had some knee surgery, a knee replacement, and I've worked on some special Right to Life projects along the political line, such as writing letters. We've been traveling; we were away this spring in Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia.
Q: What sort of Right to Life projects are you working on?
A: My one real interest is educating and organizing nurses, and I hope to be able to do a little more of that. And as the elections come along, I want to be a little more active in that. And I have to go through the files and see what needs to be tossed and what needs to be kept. It seems like every time you open them, you find something else that needs to be done.
Q: What do you miss the most about leading Right to Life of Greater Cincinnati?
A: I miss the people the most and our little volunteers. One of our little volunteers, the youngest of the bunch, died recently. She was a little (Down syndrome) girl . . . I pop in every so often and see them, but not as much as I'd like.
Q: You mentioned the upcoming election. What's your assessment of the presidential race so far?
A: I think it's absolutely phenomenal that every viable Republican candidate for president is pro-life. If you'd said 15 years ago that someday that would happen, people would've looked at you like you were daydreaming or you were smoking something. I think that's very encouraging. We haven't won, but we're not going to win in giant steps. We're going to win in small steps.
Q: What in your life prepared you best for your work in Right to Life?
A: The background of being a nurse. I went to the University of Cincinnati for nursing. It's good preparation for being a mother or anything else, and it helped me immensely in my work.
Q: How about politics? How did you learn political activism?
A: You move into it so gradually. and you make mistakes and learn from your mistakes. I had never done it before, and I learned on my feet. I enjoy the politics. Cincinnati's a very rewarding place to be in politics because we have some people who are committed, dedicated, and don't just tell you what you want to hear.
Q: Some activists have tried to find common ground between those who support legal access to abortion and those who oppose it. What do you think about the efforts? Are relations between the two camps worse or better than when you first started your work?
A: There's common ground on the peripheral issues, but the basic issue of how valuable life is is a black-and-white issue. Either the baby's alive or the baby's dead, and there's no halfway. To have common ground you have to agree on how you value a person's life, and if you don't agree on that all the other issues stay on the periphery.
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