Programs: Shalom Press, MD

Winner of the 2006 Rashbaum Award, Shalom Press, MD, has been practicing obstetrics and gynecology in and around Buffalo, New York for three decades.  He is an attending physician at Children’s Hospital, Buffalo General Hospital, Millard Fillmore Hospital, and the Erie County Medical Center.  He was president of the Buffalo Ob/Gyn Society from 2003-2004, and is a professor in the Obstetrics and Gynecology Department at the State University of New York (SUNY) Buffalo.

Born in Jerusalem, Israel, in 1940, Dr. Press trained at the Hebrew University-Hadassah Hospital and the Shaare Zedek Hospital in Jerusalem, as well as the Rothschild University Hospital in Haifa.  He emigrated from Israel to the United States in 1973 for an obstetrics/gynecology residency at the State University of New York at Buffalo, three weeks after Roe v. Wade was decided by the Supreme Court.  

A few years after he began performing abortions, anti-abortion protesters picketed Dr. Press’s offices and his home—blocking his driveway, harassing his family and neighbors, holding mock funerals outside his office, and breaking into his office and chaining themselves together with bicycle locks.  But even after his colleague Barnett Slepian, MD, was assassinated by James Kopp in 1998, and he had 24-hour federal protection because of a death threat, Dr. Press continued to perform abortions.

In Absolute Convictions, the book by his son Eyal that chronicles his life and the history of abortion in the United States, Dr. Press says, “Unplanned pregnancies are a reality.  But I feel women in such situations deserve good care, and, if they consider the alternatives carefully and decide having an abortion is the best thing for them, I feel it is their right.  And I feel that I am helping them.”