Felicia Hance Stewart, a San Francisco obstetrician and
gynecologist who became a powerful national advocate for
women's access to emergency contraception and abortion
services, died Wednesday of lung cancer at her San Carlos
home. She was 63.

Dr. Stewart was perhaps best known for her leading role in
the research establishing that the emergency contraceptive
known as "Plan B" is both safe and effective when sold
without a physician's prescription.

But that was only one of the many efforts that marked her as
a noted and outspoken feminist leader in health matters. As
an active national supporter of abortion rights, Dr. Stewart
led the successful legal effort that now allows qualified
midwives and nurse practitioners to perform abortions in
California, colleagues said.

"She was a real crusader, with a great sense of humor and
irony -- just the qualities she needed in our business,"
said Dr. Philip Darney, chief of obstetrics and gynecology
at San Francisco General Hospital. "Mostly we'll miss her
ironical sense of humor about human foibles, including her
own, which even a long illness couldn't suppress."

Darney and Dr. Stewart served together for five years as
co-directors of the UC San Francisco Bixby Center for
Reproductive Health Research and Policy.

Dr. Stewart led a rigidly controlled research project
involving thousands of young San Francisco women using "Plan
B" with pre-written prescriptions they kept with them and
were thus able to obtain the "morning after" tablets
whenever needed. Dr. Stewart's published research showed
clearly that the women did not abuse the drug, and that its
easy availability did not lead to increased promiscuity,
Darney said.

As a result, "Plan B" is now available without prescription
in many pharmacies in California and a growing number of
other states. A political battle is under way in Washington
to push the U.S. Food and Drug Administration into action on
a national scale.

For many years, Dr. Stewart worked closely with James
Trussell, director of the Office of Population Research at
Princeton University, to encourage pharmaceutical firms to
develop emergency-contraception methods, and both
researchers are credited nationally with the successful
introduction of the "Plan B" pill, which contains the single
contraceptive hormone levonorgestrel in larger-than-usual
doses.

"Felicia had extraordinary wisdom, and more than anything
else she inspired an entire generation of mostly young women
to follow in her important work," Trussell said.

During the Clinton administration, Dr. Stewart served as
deputy assistant secretary for population affairs in the
Department of Health and Human Services, and that office too
gave her a bully pulpit to advance her campaigns for women's
rights, colleagues said. In Washington, she established and
developed support for the administration's domestic and
international policies on family planning and population.

After leaving her federal post, Dr. Stewart became director
of reproductive health programs at the Henry J. Kaiser
Family Foundation in Menlo Park, and then served as staff
physician to Planned Parenthood facilities in San Francisco,
San Jose and Sacramento.

She and her former husband, the late Dr. Gary Stewart, began
their careers as resident physicians in obstetrics and
gynecology at UCSF, and first practiced their professions
jointly in Sacramento, where they also served as medical
directors of the regional Planned Parenthood organization.

Dr. Stewart is survived by her parents, Lena and Harold
Hance of Palo Alto; her brother Allan Hance of Paris; her
adult children, Matthew and Kathryn Stewart of San Carlos;
and three stepchildren, Tammy Barlow of Sacramento and Wayne
and Michael Stewart of Utah. Services are pending, and the
family suggests that contributions be made to any of the
reproductive health organizations Dr. Stewart supported
during her lifetime.