"September 1969 had arrived when Coffee came upon mention, in the SMU library, of People v. Belous, a case that only days before had exonerated a California doctor for referring a woman to an illegal abortion provider. Coffee’s mind raced. Here was a ruling that rendered a state abortion law void on grounds that it was constitutionally vague, that it violated the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Surely the abortion law in Texas was vulnerable, too. “I just thought, My goodness!” recalls Coffee. “The same logic would apply!” The thought had not occurred to Coffee before. But suddenly it consumed her, the idea, as she later explained, that “process” aside, laws that deprive a person of “some important fundamental liberty”—such as privacy—are in and of themselves impermissible. Coffee was a feminist, a member of Women for Change and the National Organization for Women and the Women’s Equity Action League. Long mindful that birth control was unreliable at best, and that the illegality of abortion, says Coffee, “seemed to be something that held women back from achieving their full potential,” she now saw that the Texas law enforcing that illegality was weak—a legal relic out of step with the fact, she says, that “if a woman self-aborted, she was guilty of no crime, not even a misdemeanor.” In a few days, the abortion rights lawyer Roy Lucas would file in New York the first suit against a state abortion law. Coffee told McCluskey over lunch at the Adolphus that she wished to do the same. There was, she said, just one problem: “I couldn’t figure out how I could find a pregnant woman who was willing to come forward.” Four months later, in January 1970, McCluskey phoned Coffee with word of a woman who’d come to his office wanting an abortion."