Sarah Weddington, who argued Roe v. Wade, will continue to teach at the University of Texas at Austin

Just before Sarah Weddington (pictured), the lawyer who argued Roe v. Wade, was set to leave her faculty job after her contract was not renewed at the University of Texas at Austin, the telephone rang, announcing a happy ending. “The dean called and said he would like for me to teach again this year, and I readily accepted,” Weddington says about the May 16 telephone call. This fall, Weddington will teach gender-based discrimination, a pre-law course for undergraduate seniors. She is still formulating plans for another possible class this spring. Randy Diehl, dean of UT-Austin’s College of Liberal Arts, says budget cuts led him to tell the college’s research centers to each cut 25 percent in operating expenses. That’s when the Center for Women’s and Gender Studies decided to let Weddington go, Diehl says. Center director Susan Heinzelman says, “I hope everybody understands that our hands were tied, and we simply did not have any money in the budget.” She adds about Weddington’s return, “Of course, we’re absolutely thrilled and delighted. We had been really distressed over our budget cuts and what that meant to the hiring of our adjuncts. We had worked really hard to make sure Sarah was hired back.” Diehl says when he heard that Weddington was leaving, he felt compelled to do something. “My feeling was Sarah Weddington is too important a figure simply to say, ‘Your services are no longer required.’ I felt very badly about the situation,” Diehl says. “Sarah Weddington is an incredibly important figure in the history of legal aspects of women’s rights. It was an enormously positive thing when we were able to recruit her in the first place.” After winning Roe, Weddington served in the Texas House, the U.S. House of Representatives, as general counsel of the U.S. Department of Agriculture and as adviser to President Jimmy Carter. Funding for her salary will come from the Department of Government, Diehl says. Weddington says she loves teaching and she devotes herself to the success of her students. Maybe that’s why former students — many are now lawyers — wrote letters to the dean and published letters to the editor in a campus newspaper arguing the college should not cut her job, Weddington says. Diehl says, “I did get a lot of letters — thoughtful, persuasive letters. What that did is confirm my own judgment. I had already made up my mind I wanted to do this, but it confirmed my view this is the right decision.”

-- Angela Morris

Comments

[Carol Crabtree Donovan]

It is such an honor to the University of Texas at Austin for the Honorable Sarah Weddington to teach there. I am proud that my alma mater agrees.