Lee Minto

In 1993, after serving as executive director for 27 years, Minto retired from Planned Parenthood. She joined the Brush Foundation board of directors, which she chaired for three years before finally stepping down at the age of 80.

In 1991, Minto appeared before the Senate Committee on Labor and Human Resources to denounce new Title X regulations introduced in 1988 that prevented family planning clinics from giving any information about abortions to patients. Speaking as part of a panel alongside Senator Rhoda E. Perry and Beth Quill, director of ambulatory services of the Women and Infants Hospital of Rhode Island, Minto argued that family planning clinics could not provide effective healthcare services without the freedom to properly inform their patients of all options:

During the 1980s, Minto initiated discussions with Seattle Archbishop Raymond G. Hunthausen, trying to find common ground between her organization and the Catholic Church; although the discussions were ultimately unsuccessful, Seattle stood as one of the only U.S. cities in which the Catholic Church entered into serious talks with Planned Parenthood.

When the referendum took place on November 3, 1970, Washington voters approved state legalization of abortion – with certain conditions attached – passing it with 56.5 per cent of the votes. Washington was the first U.S. state to legalize abortion through a vote of the people.

The Seattle-King County Planned Parenthood had been largely run by volunteers up to this point, but in 1967 the organization wanted to expand its services into other parts of Washington, and Minto was hired as the full-time executive director.

In 1967, Washington psychologist Sam Goldenberg organized a meeting of medical, legal and religious professionals to discuss the health crisis created by lack of access to safe abortions, and Minto was invited to attend. Aside from her work at Planned Parenthood, Minto was already aware of the need for safe abortions through administrative work at the University Unitarian Church, where she had encountered young pregnant women – and their male partners – searching for assistance. Sam Goldenberg's group continued its discussions and debates, formally becoming the Citizens' Abortion Study Group (later renamed the Washington Citizens for Abortion Reform). Despite being supportive of a woman's right to choose, Minto later recalled that the group was primarily focused on the healthcare issues involved:

Minto's first paid position was a job at the UN Pavilion at Seattle's World Fair in 1962.

In the late 1950s, a friend had asked Minto to join the local Seattle-King County board of Planned Parenthood. Concerned by the lack of practical sex education in schools, and by the absence of birth control and women's health issues in media coverage, Minto began teaching sex education in schools and giving speeches locally in her role as a Planned Parenthood volunteer. She developed a sex education association for King County.

Lee Minto (born 1927) is an American women's health activist and sex education advocate. She served as Executive Director of the Seattle-King County chapter of Planned Parenthood for 27 years, and was instrumental in Washington State Referendum 20, a referendum in 1970 that successfully legalized early pregnancy abortion in the state of Washington.

Minto was born October 11, 1927, in Hamilton, Montana. Her grandparents had moved to Montana from Virginia in 1890; Minto's grandfather was the personal attorney of "Copper King" Marcus Daly and had helped form Montana's first legislature.