Nellie Gray, founder of March for Life, dies

 Nellie Gray, founder of March for Life, dies

Nellie Gray left a government career to start the March for Life, the annual anti-abortion demonstration that for nearly four decades has drawn tens of thousands of activists to Washington to speak out on one of the most polarizing of American social issues.

Miss Gray, 88, was found dead Monday, Aug. 13, in her Washington home by Gene Ruane, a colleague at the March for Life Education and Defense Fund, where Miss Gray was president, Ruane said. A medical examiner will determine the cause of death, he said.

The March for Life, held each January on the anniversary of the 1973 U.S. Supreme Court decision that legalized abortion nationwide, is reported to have drawn as many as 70,000 activists in any given year since its inception in 1974. The figures do not include the counterprotesters who often converge on Washington at the same time.

March for Life protesters traditionally wear red and carry red roses, a symbol of what is known within the movement as "the pre-born child," and sometimes refer to the event as "Nellie's March," in honor of its founder.

"This is the land of the free, the place to come for advancement. ... How is it that a country built on this would kill babies?" Miss Gray told The Washington Post in 1993. "I don't understand slavery. I don't understand the Holocaust. I don't understand abortion."

Miss Gray, a career woman and a Democrat, was working as a Labor Department lawyer when the Supreme Court handed down the landmark abortion ruling in Roe v. Wade.

Horrified by the decision, she left work at 48 and began a second career in the forefront of the abortion debate.

As she told the story, she and about 30 other activists gathered in her home on Capitol Hill in fall 1973 to plan a demonstration for the following January.

"We just thought we were going to march one time and Congress would certainly pay attention to 20,000 people coming in the middle of winter to tell them to overturn Roe v. Wade," she once told the Religion News Service.

When that did not happen, Miss Gray soldiered on. Her basement, cluttered with buttons and banners, became the headquarters for a movement, often distributing news releases printed in red ink.

Her prominence is explained by her longevity and doggedness. During President Ronald Reagan's first term, she once reportedly declined to meet with him with other protesters in the Oval Office because he had not attended her rally, sending his secretary for health and human services instead. (In 1985, just after he was sworn in for his second term, Reagan became the first U.S. president to address the annual rally.)

Miss Gray's philosophy was "no exceptions, no compromise," and she referred to some of her detractors as "feminist abortionists." She held the view that life begins at conception and opposed abortion in all circumstances, including in cases when the mother's life is endangered by the pregnancy or in instances of incest or rape.

The March for Life celebrated a significant victory with the passage in 1977 of the Hyde amendment, which banned federal funding for abortions. But Miss Gray regarded the victory as incomplete, arguing that it ultimately suggested that "killing babies is all right if you have the money to pay for it."

Nellie Jane Gray was born June 25, 1924, in Big Spring, Texas, the daughter of a mechanic and a homemaker. She was baptized into the Catholic Church and cited her faith as a "very strong influence" in her life.

After serving in the Women's Army Corps during World War II, she received a bachelor's degree in business from what is now Texas Woman's University. She attended Georgetown University at night and received a law degree in 1959.

In 1970, as the women's liberation movement gathered strength, Miss Gray attended a hearing on regulations for D.C. abortion clinics. She said she was "appalled that you actually had people telling a government body that you need regulations for killing babies."

Miss Gray worked primarily for the State Department, where she did economic research, and later in the Labor Department's legislative division. She had no immediate survivors.