One of the most conservative legislators in Kansas, state Sen. Kay O’Connor, announced that she will resign this fall.

O’Connor, an Olathe Republican, on Wednesday said that after 14 years in the Kansas House and Senate fighting for “the conservative, pro-life cause” it was time for someone else to take up the battle.

“I have taken many bullets – from the media, from my opponents and, sadly, even from some of my friends,” O’Connor said, adding that she plans to teach grammar and Latin at Padre Pio Academy, a Catholic school in Shawnee.

In 2001, O’Connor gained national attention by saying the 19th Amendment, which gave women the right to vote in 1920, was a sign that men weren’t taking care of women well enough.

In 2005 and this year she worked against a bill that assured women the right to breast-feed in public. The measure was eventually approved.

In a letter to supporters, O’Connor asked for donations to help pay off her campaign debt. She ran this year for the GOP nomination for secretary of state but lost in the August primary to incumbent Ron Thornburgh.