College recognizes alumna for public health work

Julianne Herts Assistant News Editor

This past Thursday, Feb. 7, the Alumnae and Alumni of Vassar College (AAVC) gave Laurie Schwab Zabin ’46 the 2008 Alumni and Alumnae Distinguished Achievement Award for her research and service in the field of reproductive health, particularly regarding pregnancy, contraception and sexually transmitted infections. Zabin delivered a speech entitled “Poetry, Population, Public Health: Choice or Chance?”, followed by a dinner in her honor at the Alumnae House.

The Distinguished Achievement Award is one of three annual awards presented to exceptional alumnae/i recognizing graduates who have “used her or his position of visibility, power or leadership to better the human community and serve the wider goals of society,” said Executive Director of the AAVC Patricia Lichtenberg.

Zabin graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Vassar in 1945 with a major in English literature, and went on to receive her master’s degree from Harvard.

In a twist of fate, the doctor who delivered Zabin’s first child was Alan Guttmacher, who went on to create the Guttmacher Institute, a center for reproductive health and education policy.

In her speech, Zabin said that if Guttmacher had not been her obstetrician, her entire life would have been different today. It was Guttmacher who inspired Zabin to get involved in Planned Parenthood Federation of America, where she worked for 20 years.

In 1962, Zabin joined the national organization’s executive committee and became the Acting Director of Planned Parenthood of Maryland in 1974.

Four years later, at the age of 53, she completed her Ph.D. in Population Dynamics from the Johns Hopkins University School of Public Health.

Zabin’s early work was a struggle against government regulations as she fought to dispense information about contraceptives.

According to PBS’s American Experience timeline, many states had strict laws regarding birth control during this period—it was a crime to provide information about birth control in Massachusetts and a felony to use it in Connecticut.

Zabin worked to change these laws, and by the early 1960s she helped to create a clinic in Baltimore, which was one of the first federally funded clinics in the nation.

Zabin believes that American social policy today has put us “back in the dark ages.” With abstinence education gaining government support Zabin feels that, “We’re fighting the same battles all over again by substituting ideology for science.”

She believes that contraception education is of great importance and that political ideology should not prevent young people from being educated.

“Every single citizen has a role in combating this,” said Zabin. “There is a huge role for those of us in academia.”

Zabin noted that a liberal arts education like the one she received at Vassar can “make it possible for each of us to be open to a range of intellectual experience—and hopefully, to serve the troubled world in which we live in many and different ways.”

Her years of service also make Zabin a compelling role model for current Vassar students like Becca Roche ’08, who attended the award presentation on Thursday.

“Zabin’s talk made me realize how flexible a Vassar education is, and was—whether you graduated last year or in the 1940s,” said Roche. “Her journey from English major to Planned Parenthood volunteer to an advanced degree in public health gives me hope that no matter what I do after I graduate, it doesn’t have to be the only thing I do.”

Zabin currently works as a professor at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, where she is researching contraceptive use by American teenagers and young people in Shanghai, Taipei and Hanoi.

“In China they have very effective family planning,” said Zabin, “but that’s mostly for married women who already have had a child. Shifting their focus to the kinds of issues that young people are dealing with involves a different kind of service.”

In addition to teaching, she also serves as the director of the Bill and Melinda Gates Institute for Population and Reproductive Health at the University, which works with nations worldwide to develop educational programs on reproductive health. She has also been honored with the Civil Liberties Award granted by the American Civil Liberties Union Foundation of Maryland in 1996.

“Zabin is obviously an incredibly intelligent woman who is passionately devoted to her cause. I think it’s important that Vassar students recognize the amazing things they can do with their education,” Roche said.