Laurie Schwab Zabin, expert on family planning, dies at 94

The day after she gave birth to her first child in 1951, Laurie Schwab Strauss was apprehensive, if not alarmed, when her obstetrician entered her hospital room in Baltimore and sat at her bedside for what clearly was a serious talk.

“I need your help,” he began. Then he described the urgent need for poor women in inner city Baltimore to have access to contraception, which was still a controversial issue at that time.

It wasn’t a typical request for a well-born young woman who had just received a master’s degree in English literature from Harvard University. But the obstetrician, Alan Guttmacher, had already established a friendship with her during her pregnancy, and he was aware of her budding interest in population control. The conversation turned out to be a life-changing event for both doctor and patient, who later became professionally known as Laurie Schwab Zabin.

Guttmacher’s name and his mission were little known at the time, but he would soon become the nation’s leading proponent of family planning. Zabin - she later received a PhD in population dynamics - threw herself into full-time volunteer work with Planned Parenthood. After Guttmacher’s death in 1974, she was among the founders of the Guttmacher Institute, which serves as a global datacollection center on abortion and contraception policies.

Zabin died May 11 at 94 at a retirement home in Towson, Maryland. The cause was kidney failure, said a daughter, Jessica Strauss.