Julie Johnson

Part of a series on some of the Bay Area’s most controversial issues, this report profiles a Catholic abortion counselor through text and an audio slideshow.

Original post through UC Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism.

SAN FRANCISCO — Mary Ann Schwab, dyed-red hair showing gray at the roots, rides the brake as she guides her car past the graves of baseball hero Joe DiMaggio, California’s 32nd governor, Edmund “Pat” Brown, a mayor, a banking entrepreneur and more than a century of the Bay Area’s Catholic dead.

Next to the old mausoleum at Holy Cross Catholic Cemetery in Colma, Schwab parks the car by a grassy knoll. Her scarf and bright blue coat billowing in the wind, Schwab, who is well into her 80s, walks over to a white stone statue of a grieving woman on her knees inscribed “Rachel Mourning.”

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