Catherine Roraback

Catherine Roraback was the only woman in her class at Yale Law School. She was a founder of the Connecticut ACLU, and a president of the National Lawyers Guild. During her long career she defended labor organizers, immigrants being threatened with deportion under McCarthy era policies, civil rights workers, Black Panther Ericka Huggins, and maybe most famously, Estelle Griswold before the United States Supreme Court in the case that struck down restrictions on the distribution of birth control (at least to married women and men) and set the precedent for Roe vs. Wade. She died this week at age 87.

A friend sent me this lovely obituary from the Hartford Courant, and here's the New York Times.