Pittsburgh – Molly Yard, the longtime liberal activist who led the National Organization for Women during the fight over the nomination of Robert Bork to the Supreme Court, has died. She was 93.
Yard died Wednesday in the Fair Oaks Nursing Home in Pittsburgh, said her son, James Garrett, an assistant U.S. attorney.
Yard was elected president of NOW in 1987 after working for nearly a decade on its national staff. She stepped down in late 1991.
She made NOW more visible and worked against Bork, who she said might provide a fifth vote to override the high court’s 1973 ruling legalizing abortion. The Senate rejected Bork after a bitter political battle in 1987.
NOW’s membership grew by 110,000 during Yard’s tenure as president.
“We’re fighting for women’s individual rights,” she said in a 1989 interview.
She worked for various Democratic candidates, including John F. Kennedy in 1960 and George McGovern in 1972.
The daughter of Methodist missionaries, Yard was born in Shanghai, China, and said her father’s Chinese friends gave him a brass wash basin to express their sorrow that Yard wasn’t a boy.
“I grew up with that whole devaluation of myself because I was female. It’s outrageous, and it stays with you all your life,” Yard said.
