Gateway Voice of Mid-Life and Older Women (OWL) honors Vivian Zwick as Woman of Worth

One would have to have a lively imagination to believe that Vivian Zwick, a diminutive, white-haired, tastefully dressed woman had, during the early '70s, been involved in the abortion underground, shepherding women from the St. Louis area to the state of New York, where abortion was legal.

Before that, however, she began her volunteering at age 15 at the Jewish Hospital by delivering the newspaper, The Forward to the women patients.

“Many of these women had been born in Europe and couldn’t read English well,” she said. “But they loved this newspaper because it wasn’t in English.”

Zwick attended University City High School, Washington University, and the University of Illinois. Following her marriage to Sander Zwick, she went back to Washington University where she got her degree in history.

“I got involved with reproductive rights through a good friend of mine, Judy Widdicombe, who was head of Pregnancy Consultation Services,” she said. “After Gov. Nelson Rockefeller signed the bill in 1970 legalizing abortion in New York, Judy formed an alliance with a group of doctors in Dobbs Ferry, NY who had a clinic. She then trained groups of women to counsel and send clients to New York for a safe, legal abortion.

“Of course we didn’t tell a lot of people what we did in those days,” she said. “Judy had a little house over on Berthold, and we answered phone and counseled from there. We were just facilitators, and anyone who came had to fund themselves.

“We would interview the women, then they would fly to LaGuardia and meet a man who would have a placard saying ‘St. Louis’ or another password,” Zwick said. “Then they would get in the station wagon, drive out to Dobbs Ferry, have a safe and legal abortion performed much in the way we do today, and then go back on the late flight.”

When the United States Supreme Court passed Roe v. Wade, Widdicombe became the first director of Reproductive Health Services in the Central West End, while Zwick continued counseling at the Berthold office.

“But now we had a place here to send people. We didn’t have to send them to New York,” she said. “Doctors sent the women to us for counseling first. Judy knew what she was doing, and early on, she was very sure that this was a choice for the woman.”

Zwick stays involved at the agency as part of Planned Parenthood.

"It can be emotional, and we've had children as young as 12 years old in this situation,” she said. “Abortion is a very small part of what Planned Parenthood does, which is prevention, seeing that people can get contraception, make sure they know what contraception is and trying to teach young people abstinence and contraception. The world is different, and the most important thing is to educate people, young and old, about what is available and what they can do. Its chief mission was never to provide abortion, but to provide family planning and birth control.”

The best advice she received and still uses? “I’m always happy to listen to good advice, but I can’t say that I always follow it.”

“I always felt that way,” she said. “I wish I had a nickel for everybody who told me not to do what I’ve been doing.”

“My husband was very sympathetic and supportive of what I did,” she said. “But he did want to know if I could go to jail. I called Frank Susman, the attorney who helped Judy set up the clinic, and I said, ‘Sandy wants to know if I can go to jail.' And he said, 'Well, I won’t say that it isn’t a possibility, but it’s certainly not a probability since there was a law on Missouri that says you could not even counsel women.’ I was a criminal!”

In her other volunteer activities, Zwick was president of the Jewish Hospital Auxiliary and the first woman president of The Jewish Light. She stays involved in the Jewish Federation and is active in political causes.

“I like to work to get people elected who are pro-choice,” she said. “Right now I’m working for Tracy McCreery, who is running for representative of the 83rd District,” she said.

Zwick and her late husband have two children, Steven, who lives in St. Louis and Barbara, who is married to Joe Sander and lives in Sarasota, FL.

Zwick said she has always believed that women had the right to choose how to handle their bodies. “They’re smart enough to know how they should do it in spite of what our legislators say.”