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Wednesday. August 18, 1993
UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
Director offers information for women
Abortion issues focus of program
The aqua-colored office in Twente Hall is a dead giveaway.
By Katie Greenwald
Kansan staff writer
Its occupant won't settle for the norm
Alice Leberman, director of the baccalaureate program in the School of Social Welfare, activist, mentor, friend, wife and mother of two, laughs about her office.
"Everyone else has institutional beige," she says about the other offices in Twente. "I guess all I need to add to my office is a couple of pink flamingos."
She may laugh and joke a lot, but Lieberman, who has been at the University since 1988, takes her work seriously. In addition to teaching, she co-directs Options for Women, a non-University program that recruits and trains licensed social workers. The social workers provide counseling and information consistent with Kansas statutes on issues related to unplanned pregnancy.
Lieberman started the program last year with Liane Davis, associate dean of social welfare, in response to the gag rule that kept federally funded family planning clinics from discussing abortion with clients.
cusing abortion violations.
"We wanted the freedom to use the word," Lieberman says. "This is for women who both have and have not made choices about their reproductive futures. We have no interest in promoting abortion."
Lieberman says that such a free service is especially important in rural areas.
"We've helped quite a few women, and not all of them have chosen abortion."
"We focus on the rural areas because they have the toughest time locating people to help them," she says. "They just need professional guidance and support."
About 30 social workers participate in the program. The goal is to have one social worker for each of the 105 counties in Kansas.
Alice Lieberman is the director of the baccalaureate program in the School of Social Welfare and also is co-director of Options for Women, an organization that provides counseling for women with unplanned pregnancies.
Client referrals come from abortion clinics public health clinics and other agencies.
In early Jply, Lieberman and several other members of the Kansas Chapter of the National Association of Social Workers met with Sen. Nancy Kassebaum, R-Kan., to discuss the Freedom of Choice Act, Lieberman and Kassebaum have differing opinions about it.
Lieberman says Kassbeaum favors a 24-hour wait period before an abortion can be performed and parental notification in cases of teenage pregnancy.
--formed and parental notification in cases of teenage pregnancy.
kassebaum's idea behind parental notification is that it forces parents to take responsibility for the women, Lieberman says.
But Lieberman says the anti-abortion movement often defeats its purpose with the parental-notification clause.
"Quite often when they're forced to tell parents, parents push them to abortion even if they haven't made up their minds," she says.
Lieberman, who is an adviser for the KU ProChoice Coalition, says she thinks that it is important to let people make their own decisions when it comes to their reproductive futures.
"When we start telling people what they can or can't do with their bodies, we're no better than China and its one-child policy," she says.
--were what Rush Limbaugh's fans were called, asked if the woman knew how demeaning it was to call herself that. She said "ditttohead" made the woman sound as if she didn't have a mind of her own.
Lieberman and her identical twin, Mary, both agree that being a twin is difficult.
I nk people see you as competing with each other even when you're not," Alice Lieberman says.
That perception affected both of them for a while.
Mary Lieberman also is a social worker, but she did not get into the field until later.
"Alice is one of the few people I know who never spent one day of her life wondering what she was going to do," Mary Lieberman says. "She has exactly the life she wanted and planned."
And Alice leads the charge, Mary says.
"She has to be fighting for something," Mary Lieberman says. "It satisfies the part of her that has to go against the wind."
That is one reason Alice Lieberman got involved in social work. Her religion is another. She grew up Jewish in Texas.
The basis for Judaism - helping others and protecting people's dignity - leads many Jewish people into careers that serve others, Lieberman says.
Teaching is one such profession. Lieberman says she loves teaching because of the students.
"Undergraduates are exploring and testing new ideas, so you always know what they're thinking," she says.
Alice recently discovered that she could like someone with whom she completely disagreed
A young woman who called herself a "ditto-head" came up to Lieberman before class one day. She was worried that Lieberman, because she was in social work, might be too liberal.
Lieberman, upon hearing that "dittoheads"
"Oh, that just what we call ourselves," the woman said.
"I love my students," she says. "I adore them.
Even the ones that drive me crazy."
But Lieberman still likes her.
Laura Template, a friend and former student who now works for Social and Rehabilitation Services in Atchison, appreciated Lieberman's teaching style.
"She gave you a lot of information and she presented it in an entertaining way," Template says.
Vergie Meckfessel Anderson, a social worker at troquois Mental Health Center in Greensburg and a former student, says that Lieberman is very much an advocate.
She says Lieberman is very warm and caring. "Alice was concerned about the whole persuasion," she says.
"She is committed to try to bring about change for the better," Anderson says.
Lieberman and the School of Social Welfare advocate the strengths perspective.
"Social work historically has always looked at client problems as a pathology, as a sickness." Lieberman says.
The strengths perspective instead teaches students to find their strengths, as well as those of their clients, and to build on them. Lieberman credits her husband, Tom McLendon, for her ability to do this.
"I wouldn't be able to do half the things I do not for him," she says. "Tommy is very good about saying, 'You go do that and I'll take care of the fellas.'"
The "fellas" are their sons Ethan, 12, and Jared, 6.
in Donald, associate professor of social welfare, said family was very important to them, so they made the effort to find something that worked.
"We were lucky because there was that fit," he said. "We support each other."
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