Bill Baird and Prolife’s Joe Reilly Praise Jeannine Graf

Pro-abortion Bill Baird and
Pro-life Joe Reilly Both
Praise Jeannine Graf

A well-known leader of the pro-life movement in Massachusetts, Joe Reilly, debated the abortion advocate, Bill Baird. several times on Jeannine Graf’s show. Both men say her departure would be a loss to the community.

By Ed Oliver
January 16, 2001

Joe Reilly is a former president of Morality in Media, former board chairman of Mass Citizens for Life and currently an administrator at Holy Cross College. He was a guest on a number of national and local talk shows going back to the late fifties, including the Today Show and McNeil Lehrer.

One of the best talk show people he’s ever encountered is Jeannine Graf. "The firing of Graf is like the Yankees cutting Mickey Mantle in his heyday. It makes no sense,” he says. Reilly continued, “She’s enormously knowledgeable, she’s very articulate, she’s intellectually quick, she can spot the real from the phony at a thousand yards, and she has enormous personal courage.”

If Reilly ever owned a radio station and Graf were available, she would be the first person he’d hire. He characterizes her as “a hugely principled person.” He says she is much more interested in the moral aspects of current issues than most talk show hosts. He says she thinks in terms of lasting values and the common good. For instance, what is best for this country, what is best for this state, or the citizenry?

Graf would not walk away from a controversial issue, Reilly said. He was on the show about a dozen times over the years with Graf, two or three of those opposite Bill Baird over the abortion issue.

He and Baird were polar in their views, yet Graf insisted on courtesy, did not let one talk over the other. She asked very penetrating questions on both sides. “That’s the way a talk show host should be.”

Bill Baird Treated Well By Graf
Bill Baird, the so-called “Father of the Abortion Movement,” told MassNews he remembers being a guest of Jeannine Graf opposite Joe Reilly. “I always thought that Jeannine was professional. I always thought that she was very passionate about her Christian viewpoint, and I always thought that she gave me the opportunity to present the pro-choice side.”

“I think that the loss of her from the airwaves is a loss to the Boston community.”

Baird said whatever the reason Jeannine Graf was fired; someone should snatch her up right away.

Baird has bad memories of Massachusetts where he was arrested several times distributing birth control devices and pushing the envelope by challenging decency laws. He feels he has no thanks from Massachusetts. He mentioned proudly that the Roe vs. Wade decision drew heavily from three prior Baird court cases.

He thought it strange that after being ignored for so long by the Boston media, within minutes of each other, both MassNews and Boston Magazine called him.

Baird lamented that he is “frozen” out of Massachusetts “totally.” He said the New York Times wrote about what he has done for the people of Massachusetts but he never hears from Massachusetts. “The women’s groups will have nothing to do with me because I’m a man. Planned Parenthood said, quote, there’s nothing to be gained by the Baird cases. Of course they were wrong. It should be in the article in Boston Magazine. The Boston Globe won’t touch it. Baird said Massachusetts is not a liberal state when it comes to sex because it still has laws against oral sex, fornication and blasphemy."

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