Mildred Jefferson, anti-abortion activist, dies at 84

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Mildred Jefferson, the first black woman to graduate from Harvard Medical School and a nationally recognized leader of the anti-abortion movement, died Friday in Cambridge, Mass. She was 84.

Anne Fox, president of Massachusetts Citizens for Life, said Jefferson died after a recent illness.

Jefferson helped establish the National Right to Life Committee and was its at-large director when she died. She previously had served as the organization’s president.

Jefferson was born in Pittsburg, Texas, in 1926, the daughter of a schoolteacher and a minister. She graduated from Texas College in Tyler and earned a master’s degree from Tufts University in Medford, Mass.

Jefferson also had taught as an assistant clinical professor of surgery at Boston University Medical School.

-- Associated Press