In her storied career as a Portland doctor, Equi was a fierce proponent of working-class women and children. A believer in women’s reproductive rights, she also provided access to contraceptives and performed abortions. Politically, Equi was a member of the Progressive Party, as well as a staunch ally of Abigail Scott Duniway and Oregon’s suffragists.

 

Equi’s views were galvanized in 1913 after witnessing a brutal police crackdown on Portland’s working-class women during a strike at a cannery. After this she regularly marched with the poorest in demand for better conditions, aligned herself with the International Workers of the World, and declared her views as radically socialist and anarchist. 

The federal government noticed Equi’s radicalism and wiretapped her home and office. In 1917, she was arrested for opposing American entry into World War I and served ten months in prison, the only political prisoner in the San Quentin State Prison women’s ward before President Wilson commuted her sentence.

In her personal life, Equi never married, and lived openly in romantic relationships with women. She even adopted a daughter in 1915, Mary Jr., with her partner Harriet Speckart, an heiress of the Olympia Brewing Company. Following her arrest and trial, Equi would maintain that official homophobia of her same-sex partnerships was the true cause of her incarceration.