Judy Kahrl outside her Arrowsic home in October 2021. Ben McCanna/Portland Press Herald, file

Julia “Judy” Kahrl, an heir to the Procter & Gamble fortune and a longtime reproductive rights advocate, died Friday morning, family and colleagues said. She was 90.

Kahrl was born in 1934 and spent decades in public service in addition to her charity, her son Ben Kahrl said in a phone interview Friday evening.

“Her abiding vision really was enabling women to choose when and how many kids they wanted, and to bring those babies into the world safely,” he said.

The longtime Arrowsic resident died surrounded by family — she leaves behind four children and eight grandchildren — after days in the hospital following a battle with COVID-19 that worsened her overall health, Ben Kahrl said.

“She actually did get over the COVID, but it caused a lot of other problems that she couldn’t recover from,” he said. He added that during her dayslong stay in the hospital, “Lots of people were able to come visit her.”

She graduated from Radcliffe College and later earned her Ph.D. in adult education from Ohio State University, according to an Instagram post by Grandmothers for Reproductive Rights.

Kahrl founded the organization, which uses the acronym GRR!, in 2013 after witnessing the influence that older women had within their communities during a trip to Mozambique, the organization said.

Kahrl also worked with breastfeeding support agency La Leche League International and with Pathfinder International, the reproductive health charity founded by her father, Clarence Gamble, her son said.

In 2021, she and her brother Walter Gamble resigned from Pathfinder’s board over what they regarded as failures to fully reckon with the legacy of its founder, who was a proponent of eugenics.

Ben Kahrl said his mother traveled extensively, seeking a better and more personal understanding of the state of maternal care throughout the world.

“(She tried) to understand and learn about working in developing countries, where women didn’t have access to the kind of things we have access to,” he said.

Constance Alder, board chair of GRR!, said she and her peers will miss Kahrl’s sense of humor, support and “complexity of thought.”

“We at Grandmothers for Reproductive Rights have great gratitude for her life, her lessons and her leadership,” Alder said in a written statement.

Gaylon Alcaraz, GRR!’s executive director said Kahrl maintained her passion for reproductive rights through the end of her life. Reached by phone Friday night, Alcaraz said Kahrl spoke in recent weeks about keeping up the organization’s mission after her death through keeping older women engaged.

“She wanted to ensure that we were going to carry out the vision of GRR!” Alcaraz said. “She was just a very fierce leader.”

Alcaraz said she joined the organization in late September and only had a few months to get to know Kahrl, but the older woman made sure to offer a warm welcome.

“My onboarding was very affirming, and just warm and loving,” Alcaraz said, speaking through tears. “I didn’t know her a long time, but it just really feels like it.”

Kahrl prioritized smaller institutions in her charitable giving, seeking out people without access to traditional donors, her son said.

“She wanted the people who you had to look hard to find,” Ben Kahrl said. “A lot of what she did wasn’t just money, it was trust and belief in people.”

Growing up, his mother modeled a sense of humility and service to others, teaching her children to focus outward, he said. She spent her entire life learning and chasing new, improved models of health care and philanthropy.

“Some philanthropists will say ‘This is what I think should be done and let me tell you how to do it.’ She believed that the people doing the work were better able to solve the problems,” Ben Kahrl said. “The biggest thing I think she did was listen.”

This story was updated at 1:18 p.m. on Saturday, Jan. 11, 2025, to correct the spelling of Procter & Gamble.