United Church of Christ Minister and Reproductive Rights Advocate

Elinor Yeo passed away on January 10, 2023, at Newton-Wellesley Hospital. She was 88. The cause of death was heart failure. Reverend Elinor Lockwood Yeo was born on Valentine’s Day, 1934, in Manhattan. She was the oldest daughter of Dr. John Lockwood, an eminent physician and medical researcher, and Dorothy Tufts Lockwood. She was educated at the Dwight-Englewood School and Smith College, from which she graduated magna cum laude in 1955. She received her Master of Divinity from Union Theological Seminary in 1958 and was an Ecumenical Scholar at the World Council of Churches in Geneva in 1959.

Elinor Lockwood met Richard Yeo while both were serving in the campus ministry at Boston University. They were married on July 23, 1960 in Englewood, New Jersey. Their oldest child, Jonathan, was born in Boston in 1961, followed by their son, Peter in 1963. Elinor and Richard Yeo moved to Washington, D.C. in 1964 where Richard served in the campus ministry at George Washington University. Their third son, Matthew, was born in Washington in 1967.

Elinor and Richard Yeo moved to Milwaukee, Wisconsin, in 1968 to serve in the campus ministry at the University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee. Elinor Yeo was ordained in the United Church of Christ in 1970. While serving in the UWM campus ministry, she began counseling young women with unwanted pregnancies before safe and legal abortion was widely available in the United States. This was the beginning of her multi-decade career as an advocate for reproductive rights. She was a co-founder of the Wisconsin Clergy Consultation Service on Abortion, part of a nationwide network of clergy and rabbis that referred girls and women to licensed doctors to obtain safe abortions before Roe v. Wade was decided in 1973.

After Roe was decided, Elinor Yeo became the Executive Director of Milwaukee Women’s Health Organization, a clinic that provided abortions in Milwaukee. Over the course of her 14 years in that position, her clinic was regularly the target of protesters, and she and her family received death threats. Richard Yeo was violently attacked by a protester in 1986. Elinor Yeo was a frequent commentator and public speaker on issues relating to reproductive freedoms. She served on the board of the National Abortion Rights Action League (NARAL), later NARAL ProChoice America, and was the national board chair of NARAL from 1982 to 1984.

Elinor and Richard Yeo returned to Boston in 1987, where she became an associate director of the Boston City Mission Society. After her retirement, she served as a volunteer chaplain at Boston Children’s Hospital. She was a longstanding and active member of Old South Church in Boston, where she served as chaplain and later chaplain emerita to the Festival Choir.

Over the course of her lifetime, Elinor Yeo counseled and provided assistance to thousands of girls, women, and families in need. Her career in reproductive rights spanned the pre-Roe era, the decision in Roe, and the nearly 50 years that followed before the Supreme Court overturned Roe in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization. Her belief in reproductive freedom was informed by her experience of helping girls and women avoid unsafe and illegal abortions in pre-Roe America, and she was deeply saddened late in life to see the country returning to that past.

Elinor Yeo is survived by Richard Yeo, her husband of 62 years, and by her two sisters, Marcia Hincks and Dede Jamison. She is also survived by her son, Jonathan and his wife Gail Yeo, by her son, Peter Yeo and his wife Anne Urban, and by her son, Matthew Yeo and his wife Karen Spangler. She is further survived by six grandchildren, Nathan, Benjamin, Jasper, Simon, William, and Ellie Yeo.

A Memorial Service will be held at a later date at Old South Church in Boston.