Judith Rooks was born in Spokane, Washington in 1941. Her father was a surgeon in the army reserves during WWII, and her mother was a nurse. Rooks believed that aside from teaching, nursing was the only occupation that a woman could pursue, and so she enrolled at the University of Washington where she received a B.S. in nursing in 1963. She married after graduation and then moved to Washington, D.C. where, in 1964, she began working as a nurse at the clinical center (part of the National Institute of Health). While in D.C., her husband was sent to Vietnam and during his absence Rooks pursued her graduate degree in nursing at the Catholic University of America. During the late 1960s, after moving back to the west coast, Rooks worked on the weekends at San Francisco's Haight Ashbury Free Medical Center. The couple moved to Atlanta when Rook's husband took a job at Emory University Hospital. Rooks became politically involved with women's right to choose after reading an advertisement for an abortion rights meeting in the underground newspaper, The Great-Speckled Bird. She became head of Georgia Citizens for Hospital abortions, which attempted to get the Georgia abortion laws changed. In 1970, she held a press conference, captured by the media, on the steps of the Georgia legislature and declared, "because the Georgia legislature has turned its back on the health needs of Georgia women my committee will establish a counseling center to provide information and arrange legal abortions in Washington, D.C. or New York for Georgia women who could not access necessary health services in Georgia." In addition to her activism, Rooks also worked for the CDC (Center for Disease Control) as an epidemiologist in the Family Planning Evaluation Division, where she uncovered the revealing statistics regarding the disparity between black and white women who were allowed to have "legal abortions" prior to changes in the state laws. This research was used in the Doe v. Bolton case, which challenged Georgia's abortion laws. She has continued to work as an epidemiologist for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and as the Principal Investigator for the National Birth Center Study at Columbia University. Rooks has been the author of numerous publications about family planning, and women's health, as well as being an expert in the field of midwifery. She has also been the recipient of numerous honorary awards including the Martha May Eliot Award for exceptional service to mothers and children, in 1993; the Hattie Hemschemeyer Award for continuous contributions to nurse-midwifery and maternal and child healthcare, in 1998; and the National Perinatal Associations' National Award for Outstanding Contribution to Maternal and Child Health in 1999.
From the description of Judith Rooks oral history interview [sound recording], 2004 April 26. (Georgia State University). WorldCat record id: 289029543
