newjerseynewsroom.com

BY PAT SUMMERS

NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM

“Today when billions of eyes are focused on William and Kate on the red carpet in Westminster Abbey and we are celebrating the happy side of human sexuality – where love, romance and good relationships thrive, you have given me a red carpet Susie Wilson moment.”

Susan N. Wilson — introduced as “a woman who has lived her life for Planned Parenthood principles” — accepted the Sanger Circle award last Friday from the Planned Parenthood Association of the Mercer Area. She became the 15th person to be recognized for outstanding contributions to the organization’s mission since 1984, when the award was initiated.

It is named for Margaret Sanger (1879-1966), early advocate for family planning and the legalization of contraception. Sanger was almost alone when she began her fight to make birth control both acceptable and available, Wilson noted, but at her death, “The New York Times called Sanger ‘one of history’s great rebels and a monumental figure of the first half of the 20th century.’”

For more than 20 years, Wilson served as executive coordinator of the Network for Family Life Education at Rutgers University – since renamed Answer. In that role, she was the founding publisher of Sex, Etc., a national magazine and web site for teens by teens.

Now senior advisor to Answer, she writes a regular New Jersey Newsroom column (“Sex Matters”) and blogs on “Sex Ed, Honestly” at http://Answer.Rutgers.edu/.

To nearly 500 people at Planned Parenthood’s spring benefit luncheon, Wilson alluded to the “intense struggle that has raged over funding and the very existence of Planned Parenthood as an organization this momentous year.” Predicting it will remain a “hot button issue” in the 2012 campaign, she expressed “particular pride” at receiving the award.

Sanger’s opponents, Wilson said, “are trying to reduce her many great contributions for women to a single word [abortion].” But, she added, “We have to help people understand that this is not a fight about abortion, but about women’s rights and the freedom to make choices about their lives.”

Charging her audience to “change the course of the conversation,” Wilson said:

We have to talk about [Sanger’s] tag line, “Every Child a Wanted Child”; we have to talk about the correlation between   family planning and reducing poverty; we have to promote the ideas that family planning, access to contraception and comprehensive sex education are among the best ways of reducing and eliminating the need for abortions.

One in five American women have been helped by Planned Parenthood, through services that range from cancer screenings and new or annual exams to pregnancy tests, emergency contraception kits and tests and treatments for sexually transmitted infection. (Nationally, abortion procedures represent only three percent of Planned Parenthood services.)

As described on the Answer website, Wilson, MS.Ed., is a state and national leader in the fight for effective sexuality education and the prevention of adolescent pregnancy. She has received local, state and national awards for her work, authored many articles on sexuality education and appeared on numerous radio and television shows.

Wilson’s “strong interest in sexuality education began when she served on the New Jersey State Board of Education from 1977 to 1981,” the site reports. “During a presentation on teen pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases, she asked at what age young people should learn about their bodies. With that simple question, Wilson became an instrumental force behind a state mandate requiring family life education in all New Jersey public schools.”

During her comments last Friday, Wilson described herself as “a chip off Mrs. Sanger’s block,” and in that same self-effacing vein, concluded by proposing a round of applause for Margaret Sanger – “to thank her for the person who she was and the amazing work that she did for all of us.”

Wilson was recently named one of two Progressive New Jerseyans of the decade by New Jersey Policy Perspective and a Policy Fellow at the Institute for Women’s Leadership at Rutgers University’s Douglass College.

She lives in Princeton with her husband, Don.