Time March 16–23, 20201970s1973
Jane Roe
The right to choose
Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court deci-
sion that legalized abortion nationally,
is in many ways ground zero for the tre-
mendous gains women have made in
the decades since. It also created a legal
framework that would later be used to
extend rights to LGBTQ people.
Known by the pseudonym Jane Roe,
the plaintiff grew up poor, abused by
those who were supposed to care for
her. After she became pregnant with her
third child, she connected with Sarah
Weddington and Linda Coffee, lawyers
looking to challenge abortion restrictions
(she at one point fabricated a gang rape,
believing that might legally entitle her to
an abortion, but the allegation was not in
the lawsuit). In the three years it took the
case to reach the Supreme Court, she gave
birth to a child she placed for adoption.
Roe built on earlier
decisions legalizing con-
traception, and these
newfound rights to plan
wanted pregnancies and
end unintended ones up-ended traditional gender roles. We know
now that being able to choose when and
whether to have children makes women
more likely to finish their education,
more financially stable and less likely to
stay in abusive relationships. States with
fewer abortion restrictions have lower
rates of maternal and infant mortality.
The case galvanized the pro-life
movement. When Jane Roe revealed
herself to be Norma McCorvey in
1984, she was harassed; someone shot
through her windows. McCorvey was
an abortion- rights advocate for years
before becoming “100% pro-life” in the
’90s. She died in 2017. Today, with a
historically conservative court, the right
to safe abortion seems less secure than
ever, even as women continue to reap
Roe’s benefits. —Jill Filipovic
Filipovic is the author of The H-Spot:
The Feminist Pursuit of Happiness
1974
Lindy Boggs
Securing financial freedom
Lindy Boggs came to Washington as a wife. She left it half
a century later with a legacy all her own, as an influential
Congresswoman who had championed women’s
economic freedom—and who had another round yet to
go, becoming ambassador to the Vatican at age 81.
Boggs, born on a sugar plantation in Louisiana, moved
to the nation’s capital in 1941 after her husband Hale
Boggs was elected to Congress; when he disappeared in a
plane crash in 1972, she won his seat in a special election.
Two years later, when the House banking committee
was considering an amendment to a bill that would have
banned discrimination in lending on the basis of race,
age or veteran status, Boggs noted that sex and marital
status weren’t included. At the time, it was legal in the
U.S.—and not uncommon—for banks to refuse to issue
credit cards to women on their own economic merit; a
husband’s signature was what mattered. Boggs tweaked
the bill, made new copies of it herself and handed it
out to her colleagues. In its final form, the Equal Credit
Opportunity Act of 1974 ensured that women would be
able to get loans and credit cards, and at the same interest
rates given to men of similar financial status. From her
seat on the House Appropriations Committee, Boggs also
pushed for equal pay for government jobs and access
to government business contracts. Boggs helped win
American women a new economic independence: power
not as wives, but as people. ÑAlana Semuels68 ROE: BILL JANSCHA—AP; BOGGS: THE WASHINGTON POST/GETTY IMAGES