Susan B. Anthony abortion dispute
Susan B. Anthony (1820–1906) is widely known for her dedication to three issues: women's suffrage, abolition and temperance. She was raised by abolitionist Quaker parents, later attending Unitarian churches and becoming an agnostic.
As a young woman she worked in the temperance movement and as a speaker and organizer for the American Anti-Slavery Society. She is known primarily, however, for her leadership in the women's suffrage movement, a cause to which she devoted most of her life. The Nineteenth Amendment, which guarantees the right of women to vote, has been called the Susan B. Anthony Amendment because of her efforts to achieve its passage.
In 1979 she was honored as the first American woman to be represented on U.S. currency, the Susan B. Anthony dollar.
Trial of Susan B. Anthony
In 2001, the "New York University Law Review" published an article called "A Revolution Too Soon: Woman Suffragists and the 'Living Constitution'", which included a section on Anthony's trial. Its author, Adam Winkler, said the dominant mode of constitutional interpretation in the twentieth century, sometimes known as "Living Constitutionalism", is generally said to have originated around 1900 with such legal thinkers as Oliver Wendell Holmes, who believed that the constitution should be interpreted in ways that meet the present needs of society. Winkler points out, however, that the suffragists' New Departure strategy preceded those thinkers by urging the courts to declare that women's right to vote was a newly recognized natural right that was inherent in the constitution.