Weddington’s legacy shaped future Texas leaders
Farah Diaz-Tello was a student at the University of Texas at Austin when she heard about a sex-discrimination course that was open to undergraduates and aligned with her interests.
The course, Diaz-Tello recalls, was “chronically oversubscribed.” And, at the time, she didn’t actually know about the early career of its instructor, Sarah Weddington, who died this weekend at 76.
Nonetheless, she contacted the law professor, with good results. Weddington agreed to let her audit the course, treated her like all the other students, and wrote Diaz-Tello a letter of recommendation when she applied to law school herself. The letter, she said, was “the kindest, most generous letter.”
And, of course, Diaz-Tello — like thousands of other young Texans over the decades — got to learn about Roe v. Wade, the 1973 U.S. Supreme Court ruling, from the woman who successfully argued the case.
“I can’t say enough how formative it was, to see somebody in that position, to learn about the civil-rights aspects of gender justice, and to really see a woman as a role model,” said Diaz-Tello, who is now senior counsel and legal director for If/When/How, a reproductive-justice organization.
Born and raised in Abilene, the daughter of a Methodist minister, Weddington presumably didn’t set out to be a national political figure. Becoming an attorney was, in itself, an unusual accomplishment for a woman of her generation, and her early career was shaped by discrimination as well as by her own talent and achievements.
As an undergraduate student at McMurry College, for example, a dean scoffed at her stated ambition of going to law school, thereby cementing her resolve to do just that. After graduating from the University of Texas School of Law in 1967,
she couldn’t find a job at a law firm. It was a predicament other women also found themselves in, she would later explain, because firms weren’t ready to take such a bold step.
“So many really unjust things stirred our passions, and we felt we had to change them,” Weddington told journalist Pamela Colloff in a 2003 interview. “We realized that the only way to get women’s issues dealt with was to get women elected to the Legislature. Nobody else was going to do it, so we decided to do it ourselves.”
In addition to being an attorney, Weddington served as a clerk in the Texas House in 1965. She also had $100 in her checking account, and was therefore able to pay the filing fee to become a candidate. Moreover, she had an appropriate sense of self-confidence, even if various gatekeepers were still skeptical of women.
“I thought I could do it better because a lot of those legislators in 1965 were not, as they say, the brightest bulbs on the block,” Weddington told Colloff.
It was in this context that Weddington was approached about the case that would become Roe.
Several like-minded women, including her law school classmate Linda Coffee, asked if she would be interested in helping challenge Texas’ laws on abortion. At the time, Texas criminalized the procedure, except to save the life of a pregnant woman. Many other states had similarly draconian restrictions.
Weddington was just 26 years old — 26 years old! — when she argued the case, in 1971. She had never tried a case before. But her limited experience didn’t prove to be an impediment.
In 1973, the Supreme Court struck down several Texas laws, in a 7-2 ruling that also held similarly restrictive laws in other states to be unconstitutional: a landmark decision, and one for which Weddington will long be remembered.
“Sarah was a warrior in the continuing struggle for equal rights for women,” former President Jimmy Carter said in a statement.
In Texas, of course, Weddington’s death is a reminder of how things once were in this state — and how they still are, all too often.
She was part of “that great Austin matriarchy,” recalls another former student, attorney Susan Hays, who is now running as a Democrat for agriculture commissioner. Others in that matriarchy included former Gov. Ann Richards, journalist Molly Ivins, and writer Liz Carpenter, who advocated tirelessly for Texas women.
State Rep. Jasmine Crockett, a Democrat from Dallas, passed along a 1973 snapshot that had been sent to her by U.S. Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson, also a Dallas Democrat, upon hearing of Weddington’s death. The photo shows Johnson, Weddington, and Kay Bailey Hutchison, a Republican who would go on to become the first woman to represent Texas in the U.S. Senate. The three were, at the time, “freshmen” members of the Texas House.
“This was half the women sworn into the Texas House that year,” said Crockett, now running to succeed Johnson, who is retiring at the end of this term as the representative for Texas’ 30th Congressional District.
Women are still underrepresented in state government. Just think, these women — two Democrats, one Republican, all three of them talented and committed to public services — might never have made it into elected office in the first place, if not for the misdeeds of men.
The 1972 election is remembered, in Texas, in part for the change it brought to state government in the wake of the Sharpstown fraud scandal. With allegations flying that state leaders including the governor had been doing favors for Houston banker Frank Sharp, voters that year booted dozens of incumbent state legislators, in most cases ousting conservative Democrats in lieu of moderate Democrats or Republicans.
There’s a certain painful irony to the fact that Weddington died at a moment when the reproductive rights she fought to defend are once again under assault, in Texas and elsewhere.
But she must have realized that progress isn’t easy, and that change can be clawed back. Perhaps that’s why so many Texans are remembering her mentorship this week, as well as her professional accomplishments.
“It was very intentional,” said Diaz-Tello, recalling how Weddington encouraged her ambitions years ago. “She was building a generation of feminist leaders, and here we are.”