She attended the public schools of Omaha, Nebraska, and graduated from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln in 1908.

[3] In 1954 Abel was elected to be the vice chairman of the State Republican Central Committee.

That same year she was elected to complete the unexpired term of Sen. Kenneth Spicer Wherry, who had died in office.

She later observed that she campaigned for the two–month term to raise the visibility of women in political office.

[8] From 1955 to 1959 she was a member of the Theodore Roosevelt Centennial Commission,[9] and in 1957 she was named "American Mother of the Year".