The week President Obama signed the act, Ms. Slaughter was one of at least 10 Democratic lawmakers around the country targeted with vandalism and threats. A brick was thrown into one of her congressional offices, in Niagara Falls, N.Y., and a telephone message mentioning snipers was left on an answering machine at a campaign office. She accused Republicans of “fanning the flames with coded rhetoric.”

Overall, Ms. Slaughter said on another occasion, “there are a lot of people in the United States that have just abject hate for the government.” Those who felt otherwise, she said, had the duty to convince them “that this government is not their enemy.”

A longtime co-chairwoman of the Congressional Pro-Choice Caucus, Ms. Slaughter was a leader in fighting moves to reduce the scope of Roe v. Wade, the 1973 Supreme Court decision that established a constitutional right to abortion. When the House defeated a 1989 measure to continue barring the District of Columbia from paying for abortions, she declared, “I don’t think there’s anything worse for women in this country than to watch men in blue suits debating this issue.”

Ms. Slaughter, who was known for speaking bluntly in her Kentucky drawl, also helped lead a successful effort in 1994 to enact the Violence Against Women Act, which included federal funds for domestic violence shelters and for training the police, prosecutors and judges to better understand and respond to violent crimes against women. She was also prominent in calling on the Pentagon to crack down on sexual assaults of women in the military.

Ms. Slaughter publicly regretted one success. In 1991 she was one of several congresswomen who marched to the Senate side of the Capitol to demand, successfully, that Anita F. Hill’s accusations of sexual harassment against Judge Clarence Thomas be heard during his confirmation proceedings after he was nominated for the Supreme Court.

But Ms. Slaughter and others believed Ms. Hill was treated harshly when testifying before a Senate committee, and after Judge Thomas’s confirmation by the full Senate, Ms. Slaughter told The Boston Globe, “I felt guilty I’d ever asked them to go into it.”

Although Ms. Slaughter voted against impeaching President Bill Clinton in the scandal over his sexual activities with a young White House intern, she did not hide her anger toward him — and not only for what she deemed his reckless behavior in that episode. She had long believed that Mr. Clinton had made too many deals with the Republicans.