Rep. Patricia Schroeder, a Colorado Democrat, in February 1993.
Laura Patterson/CQ Roll Call/AP(CNN) - Patricia Schroeder, a former US representative from Colorado and a steadfast supporter of women's rights, passed away. She was 82 years old.
According to her daughter Jamie Cornish, Schroeder passed away on Monday night in a hospital in Celebration, Florida, with her family by her side. According to Cornish, a stroke's complications were the cause.
According to a House biography, Schroeder was first elected to the US House of Representatives in 1972 and continued to hold office for more than two decades, earning a reputation as a strong advocate for topics ranging from women's reproductive rights to armaments control.
She was given a spot on the Military Services Committee, which at the time was exclusively male.
any an an an an an a, right? No, you can not. It is not a thing for us. It is not a thing for us. It is not a thing for or or on the...... When she was elected to Congress, she was a mother of two.
“When I was growing up,” Schroeder said, according to her house biography, “my father was always interested in politics and he talked about it. The dinner table conversations were always very vivid about what was going on.”
Schroeder reflected in her memoir, “24 Years of Housework…and the Place Is Still a Mess: My Life in Politics,” on being one of just 14 women in the House when she was first elected.
“The women in Congress had to wage virtually every battle alone,” she wrote, “whether we were fighting for female pages (there were none) or a place where we could pee.”
A familiar face on Capitol Hill by the late 1980s, the lawmaker "fought Republicans on military expenditures, reproductive rights, or labor reform initiatives," according to her biography. She also came up with the moniker "Teflon president," which criticized Ronald Reagan's standing as president despite the Iran-Contra crisis.