Molly Yard, 93; Led Fight for Women’s Rights
LA Times
Molly Yard, who became president of the National Organization for Women when she was 75 and yet was credited with making the women’s movement relevant to a new generation, has died. She was 93.
Yard died Wednesday at the Fair Oaks Nursing Home in her longtime home of Pittsburgh, her family announced.
“She was a brilliant strategist and tireless organizer for campaigns for social justice who could always rally the troops,” Eleanor Smeal, a close friend who preceded Yard as president of NOW, said in a statement released by the Feminist Majority Foundation, where Yard had worked after leaving NOW.
When Yard became NOW’s president in 1987, The Times said she “had a gift for rafter-rattling oratory,” and under her leadership, the organization became more visible. Membership grew to 250,000 members, and the annual budget went up 70% to more than $10 million a year.
She led NOW during the bitter fight that helped defeat the nomination of Robert Bork to the U.S. Supreme Court in 1987, arguing that he might provide the fifth vote that would override the high court’s landmark 1973 ruling legalizing abortion.
Yard campaigned for abortion rights and worked to elect more women to political office. Until a major stroke in 1991 cut short her NOW presidency, she talked about creating a third major political party that would represent women and minorities.
