Timeline of women's legal rights in the United States (other than voting)

The following timeline represents formal legal changes and reforms regarding women's rights in the United States except voting rights. It includes actual law reforms as well as other formal changes, such as reforms through new interpretations of laws by precedents.

Before the 19th century 1641 Massachusetts: The 1641 Body of Liberties of the Massachusetts Bay colonists declares that a married woman should be, "free from bodilie correction or stripes by her husband".The Massachusetts Body of Liberties (1641) at Hanover Historical Texts Project. 1662 The Virginia colony passes a law incorporating the principle of partus sequitur ventrem, ruling that children of enslaved mothers would be born into slavery, regardless of their father's race or status.Taunya Lovell Banks, "Dangerous Woman: Elizabeth Key's Freedom Suit – Subjecthood and Racialized Identity in Seventeenth Century Colonial Virginia", 41 Akron Law Review 799 (2008), Digital Commons Law, University of Maryland Law School, accessed 21 April 2009 1664 Maryland declares that any Englishwoman who married a slave had to live as a slave of her husband's master. 1718 Province of Pennsylvania (now U.S. state of Pennsylvania): Married women are given the right to own and manage property in their own name during the incapacity of their spouse.

19th century

1820–1900 Primarily through the efforts of physicians in the American Medical Association and legislators, most abortions in the U.S. are outlawed. 1821 Maine: Married women were given the right to own and manage property in their own name during the incapacity of their spouse. 1827 Illinois: A law prohibits the sale of drugs that could induce abortions, classifying those medications as "poison". It was the first in the nation to impose criminal penalties in connection with abortion before quickening. New York: The first statute to criminalize abortion in the state is enacted. It made post-quickening abortions a felony and pre-quickening abortions a misdemeanor. 1835 Arkansas: Married women are given the right to own (but not control) property in their own name. Massachusetts: Married women are given the right to own and manage property in their own name during the incapacity of their spouse. Tennessee: Married women are given the right to own and manage property in their own name during the incapacity of their spouse. 1839 Mississippi: The Married Women's Property Act 1839 grants married women the right to own (but not control) property in her own name. 1840 Maine: Married women are given the right to own (but not control) property in their own name. 1841 Maryland: Married women are given the right to own (but not control) property in their own name. 1842 New Hampshire: Married women are given the right to own and manage property in their own name during the incapacity of their spouse. 1843 Kentucky: Married women are given the right to own and manage property in their own name during the incapacity of their spouse. 1844 Maine: Married women are granted separate economy and trade licenses. Massachusetts: Married women are granted separate economy. 1845 New York: Married women are granted patent rights. The state also passes a statute that proclaimed women who had abortions could be given a prison sentence of three months to a year. It was one of the few states at the time to have laws punishing women for getting abortions. Florida: Married women are given the right to own (but not control) property in their own name. 1846 Alabama: Married women are given the right to own (but not control) property in their own name. Kentucky: Married women are given the right to own (but not control) property in their own name. Ohio: Married women are given the right to own (but not control) property in their own name. Michigan: Married women are given the right to own and manage property in their own name during the incapacity of their spouse. 1848 New York: Married Women's Property Act grants married women separate economy. Pennsylvania: Married women are granted separate economy. Rhode Island: Married women are granted separate economy. 1849 Alabama: Married women are given the right to own and manage property in their own name during the incapacity of their spouse. Connecticut: Married women are given the right to own and manage property in their own name during the incapacity of their spouse. Missouri: Married women are given the right to own (but not control) property in their own name. South Carolina: Married women are given the right to own (but not control) property in their own name.

1850–1874 1850 California: Married Women's Property Act grants married women separate economy. Wisconsin: Married Women's Property Act grants married women separate economy. Oregon: Unmarried women are given the right to own land.Richard J Evans (1979). Kvinnorörelsens historia i Europa, USA, Australien och Nya Zeeland 1840–1920 (The Feminists: Women's Emancipation Movements in Europe, America and Australasia, 1840–1920) Helsingborg: LiberFörlag Stockholm. (Swedish) Tennessee: Tennessee becomes the first state in the United States to explicitly outlaw wife beating. 1852 New Jersey: Married women are granted separate economy. Indiana: Married women are given the right to own (but not control) property in their own name. Wisconsin: Married women are given the right to own and manage property in their own name during the incapacity of their spouse. Circa 1853 Illinois: When Illinois opened its first hospital for the mentally ill in 1851, the state legislature passed a law that within two years of its passage was amended to require a public hearing before a person could be committed against his or her will. There was one exception, however: a husband could have his wife committed without either a public hearing or her consent. 1854 Massachusetts: Married women are granted separate economy. 1855 Michigan: Married women are granted separate economy. 1856 Connecticut: Married women are granted patent rights. 1857 Maine: Married women are granted the right to control their own earnings. Oregon: Married women are given the right to own (but not control) property in their own name. Oregon: Married women are given the right to own and manage property in their own name during the incapacity of their spouse. 1859 Kansas: Married Women's Property Act grants married women separate economy. 1860 New York's Married Women's Property Act of 1860 passes. Married women are granted the right to control their own earnings. Maryland: Married women are granted separate economy, the right to control their earnings, and trade licenses. Massachusetts: Married women granted trade licenses. 1861 Illinois: Married women are granted separate economy and control over their earnings. Ohio: Married women are granted separate economy and control over their earnings. 1862 New York's Married Women's Property Act of 1860 is amended so that women lost equal guardianship of their children, and only had veto power over decisions on apprenticeship and the appointment of testamentary guardians. Parts of the act that made husbands and wives equal in realty in cases of intestacy were overturned. 1864 North Carolina: The Supreme Court of North Carolina decides, in the case State v. Black, that "[a] husband cannot be convicted of a battery on his wife unless he inflicts a permanent injury or uses such excessive violence or cruelty as indicates malignity or vindictiveness; and it makes no difference that the husband and wife are living separate by agreement." 1865 Louisiana: Married women are given the right to own and manage property in their own name during the incapacity of their spouse. 1867 Illinois: In 1867, the state passes the Bill for the Protection of Personal Liberty, which guaranteed all people accused of insanity, including wives, had the right to a public hearing. It also passes a bill that made abortion and attempted abortion a criminal offense. Alabama: Married women are granted separate economy. New Hampshire: Married women are granted separate economy. 1868 North Carolina: Married women are granted separate economy. Arkansas: Married women are granted trade licenses. Kansas: Married women are granted separate economy, trade licenses, and control over their earnings. South Carolina: Married women were given the right to own (but not control) property in their own name. Georgia: Married women were given the right to own (but not control) property in their own name. New York City: Susannah Lattin's death led to an investigation that resulted in the regulation of maternity clinics and adoptions in New York City. 1869 Minnesota: Married women were granted separate economy. Georgia: Married women were granted separate economy. South Carolina: Married women are granted separate economy and trade licenses. Tennessee: Married women are granted separate economy. Iowa: Married women are granted control over their earnings. Illinois and Massachusetts: Legislation passed in both states allow married women equal rights to property and custody of their children. Circa 1870 Illinois passes another law banning the sale of drugs that could cause induced abortions, allowing an exception for "the written prescription of some well-known and respectable practicing physician". 1870 Wyoming Territory: Justice Howe gives women the rights to sit on a jury.Mitchell, Jocelyn. 2010. “Women's Suffrage in Wyoming in 1869: The Uproar Against Female Jurors.” Atlanta Review of Journalism History 11 (4): 15–30. The first woman to serve on a jury was Eliza Stewart Boyd.Whittenburg, Clarice. 1957. “Portrait of an ‘Ordinary’ Woman: Eliza Stewart Boyd.” Annals of Wyoming 29 (1): 33–37. 1871 Mississippi: Married women are granted separate economy, trade licenses, and control over their earnings. Arizona: Married women are granted separate economy. Arizona: Married women are granted trade license. 1872 New York: The state makes it a penalty to perform an abortion, with a criminal sentence of between 4 and 20 years in prison. Pennsylvania: Married women are granted control over their earnings. California: Married women are granted separate economy. Montana: Married women are granted separate economy. California: Married women are granted trade license. California: Married women are granted control over their earnings. Wisconsin: Married women are granted control over their earnings. 1873 Arkansas: Married women are granted separate economy and control over their earnings. Kentucky: Married women are granted separate economy and trade licenses. North Carolina: Married women are granted control over their earnings. Delaware: Married women are granted control over their earnings. Iowa: Married women are granted separate economy. Nevada: Married women are granted separate economy, trade licenses, and control over their earnings. Iowa: Married women are granted trade license. The Comstock Law was a federal act passed by the United States Congress on March 3 as the Act for the "Suppression of Trade in, and Circulation of, Obscene Literature and Articles of Immoral Use". The Act criminalized usage of the U.S. Postal Service to send any of the following items:Horowitz, Helen Lefkowitz. Rereading Sex. New York: Random House, 2002. erotica contraceptives abortifacients sex toys personal letters alluding to any sexual content or information information regarding the above items In places like Washington D.C., where the federal government had direct jurisdiction, the act also made it a misdemeanor, punishable by fine and imprisonment, to sell, give away, or have in possession any "obscene" publication. Half of the states passed similar anti-obscenity statutes that also banned possession and sale of obscene materials, including contraceptives.