Felicia Stewart was not afraid to take on a fight, especially one as controversial as abortion. The Harvard Medical school graduate and gynecologist, who succumbed to lung cancer on April 13, was a pioneer in the creation of Plan B, otherwise known as the morning after pill, reports the Los Angeles Times.

"She was an articulate spokesperson for reproductive health and reproductive rights," said James Trussell, a professor of economics and public affairs and director of the Office of Population Research at Princeton University. "She inspired a generation of young women clinicians, researchers and activists to strive to be like her."

The LA Times goes on to point out that Stewart worked at one of the first health clinics to provide abortions after the procedure was legalized in New York on April 11, 1970, and was even offering patients a Plan B before it existed in the form we know today, by prescribing birth control pills in a higher than normal dose.

When told that her actions would only increase lax contraceptive measures, she retorted to a New York Times reporter: "Look, people's lives are people's lives, and some of them can't cope or be as organized as some of us might like. But it's only in the area of sex that we get involved in the ethics of promoting risk taking, the idea that we should withhold information or devices because we don't want people to need them. Would you make the same argument about cholesterol drugs? Saying, if we give people a drug that will reduce cholesterol, they won't be as likely to exercise and eat properly like they really should?"

Stewart also served as the deputy assistant secretary for population affairs for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services from 1994 to 1996, where she helped create domestic and international policies on family planning and population issues, and worked with the Center for Reproductive Health Research & Policy and the Bixby Center for Reproductive Health Research & Policy, both in San Francisco. She also directed the Reproductive Health Program at the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation in Menlo Park, Calif.