Jane Hodgson, a leading voice for abortion rights and the first physician in the United States to be convicted of illegally performing an abortion in a hospital, died October 23 at 91.

She was convicted in 1970 of defying Minnesota’s abortion ban by performing the procedure, in a ruling overturned after Roe v. Wade, the 1973 U.S. Supreme Court decision that legalized abortion.

Hodgson ran an abortion clinic in Washington, D.C., not far from the White House. Her work made her a lightning rod for attention, with abortion-rights advocates calling her “an international and national icon,” while opponents derided her as a “baby killer.” In later years, she regularly commuted from her home in Rochester, Minn., outside of St. Paul, to Duluth, where she was the only doctor willing to perform abortions.

Hodgson also advocated for the use of the “morning after pill” and challenged a Minnesota law that required minors seeking abortions to give both parents 48 hours’ advance notice.

A U.S. Supreme Court ruling in 1990 in Hodgson v. Minnesota said that minors can get permission from a judge permission to bypass the parental notification requirement and obtain abortions.

Hodgson said the ruling was “no great victory,” because “they’re still allowing restrictions, and any kind of restriction on abortion is a handicap to women’s reproductive health.”

Born in 1915, Hodgson graduated Carlton College and the University of Minnesota Medical School and studied at the Mayo Graduate School of Medicine in Rochester after first being introduced to medicine by her father, a rural family physician.

She developed clinics where abortions are performed all over, including one in Washington, D.C., and the Women’s Health Center in Duluth.