Florence Ellinwood Allen Quotes
Liberty cannot be caged into a charter or handed on ready-made to the next generation. Each generation must recreate liberty for its own times. Whether or not we establish freedom rests with ourselves.
Allen, Florence Ellinwood. This Constitution of Ours. G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1940.
Those who support the right of the individual woman to use contraception or have an abortion cite this quotation to illustrate this early statement of the right of a person to have control over his or her own body.
Florence Ellinwood Allen was a United States Circuit Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. She was the first woman to serve on a state supreme court and one of the first two women to serve as a United States federal judge. In 2005, she was inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame.