Honoree Profile: Roxanne Barton Conlin

Roxanne Barton Conlin graduated from law school in 1966 and gave her first speech on women's legal rights to a church group in 1968. "I was condemned," she says, but that didn't stop her. In 1969, she became the first part-time attorney general for Iowa, a position from which she had to resign in 1976 because of her "activist advocacy" for women's reproductive freedom.

Conlin attended the first convention of the National Women's Political Caucus in Houston,advising on its bylaws.She was appointed to the first Iowa Commission on the Status of Women and supported Shirley Chisholm for President, chairing the Iowa effort. At the Democratic National Convention in 1972 she used parliamentary procedure to bring the Iowa Democratic Convention to a halt,with eventual passage of a platform including the Equal Rights Amendment and reproductive freedom.

Also that year, Conlin tried the first sex discrimination case in Iowa, Huebner v American Republic Insurance Company. From 1976 to 1977 she was a consultant to the U.S. Department of State on International Women's Year, editing and writing booklets on homemakers' rights for all 50 states and the District of Columbia.

She was appointed U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Iowa by President Jimmy Carter in 1977, the second woman in history to hold that position.

From 1986 to 1988 she chaired the NOW Legal Defense and Education Fund and in 1988 became the first woman officer of the Association of Trial Lawyers of America, where she wrote and secured passage of a resolution requiring women and minorities' participation in programs and on all committees. She also created a minority caucus with representation on the board of governors and added women members to it. In 1992-93, she was elected the first woman president of the association.

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