[2] This stance contrasted significantly with Catherine's deep involvement in women's rights and her promotion of feminism that came to be her legacy.
Planned Parenthood executive director Estelle Griswold realized that the law was out of date and posed medical problems.
Roraback argued that the banning of contraceptives was a medical concern for women and a problem for married couples, and should be overturned.
[6] As a result, Griswold and Buxton decided to test whether or not the law would be enforced, and opened a birth control clinic in New Haven.
The clinic was shut down almost immediately and Griswold and Buxton were arrested and found guilty of violating the law by providing birth control.
However, after a brief time, it was understood that the Connecticut courts were not going to change their stance on birth control and Roraback would lose the case.
Upon first entering the courtroom, Huggins commented on the lack of women assisting in the case, noting the male judge, jury, and attorneys.
Roraback devised a plan to help Huggins win the case by providing a line for her to say if the cross examiner condescended or spoke over her.
Peter Reilly, an 18-year-old from Litchfield County, Connecticut, was accused of sexually assaulting and brutally murdering his mother, Barbara Gibbons, on September 28, 1973, after returning from a youth meeting at his church.
Peter Reilly asked Roraback to represent him, as he was sure that he would be sentenced to years in prison without strong legal assistance.
Her determination to prove his innocence and expose the corruption that Reilly was subjected to was so strong that she agreed to take on the case for an infinitesimal amount of money.
[8] Roraback appealed the verdict immediately, refusing to allow the court to get away with the conviction based on a forced confession.
The new prosecutor quickly found details and extensive evidence that showed that Reilly was miles away from his house when the murder happened.
The case was very significant in Connecticut because the public began to feel that the police were not to be trusted, as they forced a man to sign a confession of murder when he was clearly innocent.
[citation needed] The story was the subject of the books Guilty Until Proven Innocent and A Death In Canaan, the latter made into a TV movie (1978).
However, State police were reluctant to release the files to the public, a notion that angered many who felt that the murder should be solved.
[citation needed] Since 1980, NARAL Pro-Choice Connecticut has given out the Catherine Roraback Award, an award given to individuals and organizations that have demonstrated leadership, courage and activism in the struggle to protect privacy rights, the legal right to obtain an abortion, and access to reproductive health for all women.
She served on the Connecticut Women's Education and Legal Fund and was a board member emeritus of the American Civil Liberties Union.
Among these are induction into the Connecticut Women's Hall of Fame, an esteem also received by Katharine Hepburn and Helen Keller.
She participated in Planned Parenthood as a legal counsel long after Griswold, and continued to defend, as she called them, the "dissenters and the dispossessed".