Ruth Roemer (b.1916) is an activist and advocate on such issues as women's reproductive rights, tobacco laws, health manpower, AIDS, and national health insurance. Before Roe vs. Wade, she helped establish and served as vice-chair of the California Committee on Therapeutic Abortion to help legalize abortion. She influenced California to become the second state to pass a law allowing abortion on certain categorical grounds. The collection consists of correspondence, papers and printed materials of the California Committee on Therapeutic Abortion, including files, articles, pamphlets, legal briefs, speeches, photographs, press releases, clippings, and other materials, including those from vice-chair Ruth Roemer.

Ruth Roemer earned a JD from Cornell Law School in 1939; as a research associate at Cornell in the late 1950s, she worked on a study of mental hospital admission laws in New York; her group's research was published under the title, Mental illness and due process, and the New York state legislature enacted many of its recommendations into law; Roemer became an activist and advocate on such issues as women's reproductive rights, tobacco laws, health manpower, AIDS, and national health insurance; before Roe vs. Wade, she helped establish and served as vice-chair of the California Committee on Therapeutic Abortion to help legalize abortion; influenced California to become the second state to pass a law allowing abortion on certain categorical grounds; wrote second edition of a monograph for the World Health Organization, reviewing worldwide legislation to control the tobacco epidemic; she also fought for the implementation of a national health insurance program for the U.S.

11 boxes (5.5 linear ft.)

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