Nellie Gray, a lawyer and activist who founded an annual anti-abortion event that fills the National Mall every January, died recently. She was 86.

Gray, the founder of the March for Life, was found dead in her Washington home yesterday by a friend and colleague, the Associated Press reports.

Before the U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark ruling in Roe v. Wade in 1973, Gray was a lawyer who had worked for the U.S. State and Labor departments. After the verdict, though, she recommitted her life to overturning the ruling and organized the first March for Life the following year.

In a statement on its website, the March for Life said this about its founder:

Until the very last moment of her life, Nellie pressed for unity in the prolife movement. She firmly believed that not a single preborn life should be sacrificed for any reason, and urged all prolife organizations to adopt the March for Life’s signature statement, the Life Principles, as the guiding light for all participants in the noble cause to which she devoted her life.

An autopsy is being conducted to determine when and how Gray died, the AP reports.