Background
Cook was born on August 17, 1919 as Constance Eberhardt in Shaker Heights, Ohio to Walter and Catherine Sellmann Eberhardt. She grew up in New York City, where she graduated from Hunter College High School.
Cook was born on August 17, 1919 as Constance Eberhardt in Shaker Heights, Ohio to Walter and Catherine Sellmann Eberhardt. She grew up in New York City, where she graduated from Hunter College High School.
She attended Cornell University, receiving her undergraduate degree in 1941, before being awarded a law degree from Cornell Law School in 1943.
Wade decision by the Supreme Court of the United States in 1973 legalized the practice nationwide. She was appointed to serve as Cornell"s vice president for land grant affairs, making her the first female vice president in Cornell history. New York State Assembly
She was hired as a legal assistant to Assemblyman Ray South. Ashbery and ran for his Assembly seat when he retired.
In the Assembly, she was an advocate for the expansion of the State University of New New York
Cook drafted a bill expanding abortion rights together with Democratic Assemblyman Franz Leichter of Manhattan. They proposed legislation that included no restrictions on the practice of abortion.
The bill passed in the Senate on March 18, 1970 after five hours of debate by a vote of 31 to 26. In the Assembly, the bill was amended to allow women to have abortions until their 24th week of pregnancy or at any time to protect the life of the mother.
As the roll call progressed in the Assembly on April 9, 1970, the legislature deadlocked at 74 in favor and 74 opposed, with one member absent and the Assembly speaker not voting.
Assemblyman George M. Michaels, who had voted against the proposal, then asked to change his vote in favor of the new law. With the switch by Michaels, and Speaker Perry Duryea"s yes-vote, the bill passed by a vote of 76 to 73 in the Assembly. Governor Nelson Rockefeller signed the law the next day and the United States. Supreme Court patterned its ruling in its landmark January 1973 decision Roe v.
Wade on the New York law.
Cook took the matter to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (Equal Employment Opportunity Commission/Equal Employment Opportunity) who issued a decision favoring Schiess. In November 1976, Ned Cole, the bishop who had blocked Schiess" ordination, indicated that he would have her ordained in ceremonies to be held in January 1977.
"I didn"t really have a sense at that time that we had done something momentous, though it was long overdue.. ooking back now, it seems like a bigger deal." (Constance Cook in re the 1970 New York State abortion bill. As she recounted to the New York Times in April 2000).
Constance Cook died at age 89 at her home in Ithaca, New New York
Her husband, Alfred, had died in 1998.
She was a member of the New York State Assembly from 1963 to 1974, sitting in the 174th, 175th, 176th, 177th, 178th, 179th and 180th New York State Legislatures.