Patsy Takemoto Mink’s Trailblazing Testimony Against a Supreme Court Nominee

The first woman of color in Congress opposed G. Harrold Carswell’s nomination in 1970 and helped clear a path for Harry Blackmun, who wrote the Roe v. Wade opinion. It seems particularly relevant now.

On a winter Thursday morning in 1970, Patsy Takemoto Mink came before the Senate for its hearing on the Supreme Court nominee George Harrold Carswell.

The first witness to oppose Carswell’s nomination, Mink told the panel, “I am here to testify against his confirmation on the grounds that his appointment constitutes an affront to the women of America.”

Her testimony—which was followed by Betty Friedan, the author of The Feminine Mystique—would mark the beginning of a groundswell of opposition against Carswell, a southern judge and President Richard Nixon’s second attempt to appoint a Supreme Court justice (the first being Clement Haynsworth). As it happened, Nixon’s third nominee for the seat was Harry Blackmun, a midwestern Republican, who went on to write the Supreme Court’s majority opinion three years later in Roe v. Wade.

Published in The Atlantic