Paula Hollinger, Maryland Senator Who Championed Women's Rights, Dies at 85

Sen. Shelly Hettleman rose twice on the Maryland Senate floor to speak Paula C. Hollinger's name. A year ago during Women's History Month, she celebrated Hollinger as a trailblazer in women's reproductive rights. Thursday, she rose to share thoughts in her memory. Hollinger died March 25 in Sarasota, Florida, after a short battle with leukemia. She was 85.

The clearest measure of what Hollinger left Baltimore and Maryland is a single law: the 1990 Freedom of Choice Act, which she sponsored as a Democratic senator from Baltimore County to codify Roe v. Wade into state statute. Opponents held the Senate floor for eight consecutive days, shutting down all other legislative business in an effort to kill the bill. It passed anyway. Maryland voters ratified it 62 to 38 percent in a 1992 referendum. When the Supreme Court overturned Roe in 2022, reproductive health access at clinics across the state, including those serving Baltimore patients, remained legally protected because of what Hollinger built 32 years earlier.

"I truly will forever be grateful for that work that she did in the Maryland legislature," said Katie Curran O'Malley, CEO of the Women's Law Center of Maryland.

Hollinger entered politics as a registered nurse, graduating from the Mount Sinai Hospital School of Nursing in New York in 1961. She represented the 12th House District from 1979 to 1987, then the 11th Senate District from 1987 to 2007, nearly 30 years in the General Assembly. For the final four years of her Senate tenure, she chaired the Education, Health and Environmental Affairs Committee, overseeing state policy on hospitals, clinics, and health workforce programs serving every Baltimore-area jurisdiction. After leaving the legislature, she served as associate director for health workforce at the Maryland Department of Health and Mental Hygiene until 2015.

Hettleman, who now holds the same 11th District Hollinger once occupied, called her "a role model and a mentor to me and very important to this body.