MABEL WADSWORTH

It seems quaint today, but telling women in the 1950s that they could take control of their bodies and have babies only when they wanted was a radical idea. One of the most important radicals in this realm in Maine was Mabel Wadsworth, who died Wednesday at the age of 95.

She leaves a legacy of not only pregnancy prevention, but of better health care for women, especially low-income women. The health center that bears her name is the only independent women’s health clinic in Maine and one of only about 20 nationally. Being independent and nonprofit allows the center freedom from restrictions on birth control, abortion and AIDS services that often come with federal funding. Although abortions account for only about 10 percent of clinic services, it is a frequent target of protesters, giving the center the feel of a bunker.

Ms. Wadsworth understood early that women would feel more comfortable talking about health and reproductive issues with other women. She recruited women to venture into rural Maine to educate women about the birth-control options. Her mission, she said recently, wasn’t about feminism, it was about letting women know that they had control over their destiny. “It was simply educating women that you really and truly could take a pill and not have any more babies,” she recalled.

Ms. Wadsworth moved to Bangor

in 1946 with her husband, Dr. Richard Wadsworth. Concerned that too many teenage girls were having unwanted babies, she studied the ideas of Margaret Sanger, a national pioneer in women’s reproductive rights. In Bangor, she joined the Maternal Health League and seen began spreading her birth-control message in Penobscot and Piscataquis counties.

Robert Woodward, a former librarian at the Bangor Public Library quipped that historians would see Ms. Wadsworth’s mark in the fact that there was no population growth in Bangor in the 1960s, ’70s and ’80s.

Her legacy was much more than that, however. It was about ensuring that local women knew what their choices were and that they received the non-judgmental support, medical and otherwise, to fulfill whatever choice they made.

Sharon Barker, director of the Women’s Resource Center at the Uni-versity of Maine and president of the board at the Mabel Wadsworth Women’s Health Center, recently observed, “She mentored so many women in the area of women’s health that it’s just impossible to imagine how this issue would have evolved without her.”