William Floyd Nathaniel Harrison, the son of small-town teachers, was born in rural Faulkner County, Ark., on Sept. 8, 1935. His mother would say that she knew he was destined to become an obstetrician because he essentially delivered himself as his father rode on horseback to fetch the doctor. He grew up going to Methodist and Baptist churches (his mother played piano at both), and twice read the entire Bible at 12, ending up, he said, thoroughly unimpressed with the God it described.

By his account, he piled up D’s and F’s at what is now the University of Central Arkansas in Conway before enlisting in the Navy at 17. He later enrolled at the University of Arkansas, where he studied business until he fell for Betty Waggoner. She was dating a pre-med student, he said, so he switched to that to impress her. They were married for 50 years.

In addition to his wife, Dr. Harrison is survived by his daughters, Amanda Robinson and Rebecca Harrison; his son, Benjamin III; a brother, Ben; two sisters, Mary Harrell and Martha Harrison; and seven grandchildren.

Dr. Harrison received his undergraduate and medical degrees from the University of Arkansas and did his internship and residency there. He and a colleague set up the Fayetteville Women’s Clinic in 1972.

Dr. Harrison performed his first abortion in 1974, a year after they became legal, and found himself doing them sporadically while his clinic was booming delivering babies. But by 1984, as older doctors retired and younger ones shied from offering abortions, often fearing being ostracized or attacked, he became the only doctor in his area performing them.

As more and more abortion patients knocked on his door, he said, he began recalling the woman who would have preferred cancer to pregnancy. He also recalled the many women who had come to the hospital seriously injured by illegal abortions.

So after delivering more than 6,000 babies, he gave up that practice and devoted himself to abortions, writing that if he wanted them to be legal, safe and available, the only moral and ethical course was for him to do them.

As for the protesters frequently outside his clinic, he often said they were splendid advertising, drawing women in need to the clinic who might otherwise have not known where to go.