The first woman appointed to the US Supreme Court. And it only took the court 192 years to get there! O’Connor grew up on a cattle ranch in El Paso, Texas. That’s right: America’s first lady associate justice was a cowgirl before she was a judge. She was appointed to the SCOTUS in 1981 by President Ronald Reagan after serving as attorney general of Arizona, as a state senator, and as a Court of Appeals judge. In 1992, O’Connor sided with the majority in preserving the right to abortion in Planned Parenthood v. Casey. Casey was a chance to overturn Roe v. Wade, and because she had been appointed by a Republican president who knew that she found abortion “personally repugnant,” O’Connor was expected to vote to do that. Instead, she joined the majority in preserving the fundamentals of Roe. Still, the Casey ruling maintained the rights of individual states to restrict access to abortion, provided that the restrictions did not place an “undue burden” on women. You know, like medically unnecessary but mandatory transvaginal ultrasounds. Nothing too undue or burdensome. O’Connor retired from the court in 2006 and her seat was filled by Justice Samuel Alito, the human incarnation of an undue burden. (See also COWGIRL; PLANNED PARENTHOOD; ROE V. WADE)