Robin Chandler Duke
Population Crisis Committee
For dedicated efforts to enhance the lives of the worldwide community through family planning and population control.
For the past 25 years, Robin Chandler Duke has been a tireless advocate of family planning, world population stabilization and women's reproductive rights, and she is widely recognized for her effective work on these issues.
Since 1974, Mrs. Duke has served with the Population Crisis Committee, where she is now national chair. The Committee, a Washington-based public policy organization, advocates population stabilization through universal access to voluntary family planning.
While Mrs. Duke's professional accomplishments have spanned the fields of journalism, diplomacy, politics and finance, she traces her commitment to her experiences in Asia and Latin America, where she witnessed the tragedies of many desperate women driven to illegal and unsafe abortions. Her many years of service have been prompted by her general belief that rapid population growth is one of the most important problems facing the world community. She has devoted much time with the Committee to help influence national government, especially in developing countries, to adopt sound population policies.
Robin Duke has been unwavering in her dedication to those concerns. She is a director of the Alan Guttmacher Institute and a former director of Planned Parenthood Federation of America. In 1980, she held the rank of ambassador as head of the US delegation to the UNESCO conference in Belgrade. She worked with the National Abortion Rights Action League for many years and now serves as president emeritus.
Mrs. Duke has worked in many developing countries on family planning projects. In 1980, she was one of the only two women to make a presentation at the first Conference on Population in the Arab World, held in Tunisia in 1983.
Mrs. Duke has been decorated by the governments of Spain and Luxembourg for her work on humanitarian affairs. She is a director on four major corporate boards and uses her energies to shape corporate social policy on population and reproductive issues.
To Robin Chandler Duke, for her achievements in promoting health education, family planning, and world population control, championing often unpopular causes to defend women's reproductive rights, this 1991 Albert Lasker Public Service Award is given.
