Gloria Steinem, top feminist and abortion activist, dies at 92

In late 1956, Steinem discovered she was pregnant. The father was journalist Blair Chotzinoff; she had broken off her engagement with him because she feared that marriage would mean settling to “a life that wasn’t mine at all.” In London awaiting a visa for India, she made crude attempts to self-abort, throwing herself down the stairs. Abortion was illegal in Britain, but Dr. John Sharpe referred her to a female doctor willing to end her baby’s life for $500. The abortion took place in January 1957.

Sharpe made Steinem promise him two things in exchange: that she would never reveal his name, and that she would “do what you want with your life.” She kept the first promise for over a half-century, until the publication of her first memoir. She kept the second until the end. Abortion activism would become one of the dominant causes of her career.

Her travels launched her career as a freelance journalist, writing for publications such as Esquire and Glamour; in 1968, she became a founding editor of New York Magazine. On March 21, 1969, she attended the Redstockings Abortion Speak-Out at Washington Square Methodist Church in Greenwich Village, New York. The Redstockings were a radical feminist group, and the event featured a dozen women defiantly detailing their illegal abortions. Historians consider the event a seminal moment in feminist history; the New York Times described it as “The First Time Women Shouted Their Abortions.”

Steinem was inspired. She had considered her own abortion a private matter. The event persuaded her that it was a political one, as well. Feminism and abortion activism—and the two were synonymous to Steinem—moved to the center of her journalism. Her 1969 essay “After Black Power, Women’s Liberation” launched her into the national spotlight. In 1970, she testified in favor of the Equal Rights Amendment. The following year, she partnered with Betty Friedan and other feminist leaders to found the Women’s Political Caucus and the Women’s Action Alliance. In 1972, she launched Ms. magazine; in 1973, the Ms. Foundation for Women; in 1977, she co-founded Voters for Choice.

It is difficult to overstate Gloria Steinem’s ubiquity in the abortion debate. In the early 1970s, she coined the phrase “reproductive freedom” to make abortion a more politically palatable subject. The very first issue of Ms. magazine featured the headline “We Have Had Abortions,” followed by the signatures of 53 prominent American women. Steinem became a staple at abortion protests; I saw her at the Women’s March in 2017, then 82 years old, still advocating angrily for feticide as fundamental to freedom and the feminist vision.

For Steinem, the right to abortion was foundational to a free society. “Obviously, without the right of women and men to make decisions about our own bodies, there is no democracy,” she stated when Roe v. Wade was overturned in 2022. The American Revolution declared the right to “life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness”; Steinem’s Sexual Revolution demanded that the unborn be denied the first right so that adults could enjoy the second and third.

There were few problems Steinem did not attribute to too many children. “Listen, what causes climate deprivation is population,” she said in 2017. “If we had not been systematically forcing women to have children they don’t want or can’t care for over the 500 years of patriarchy, we wouldn’t have the climate problems that we have. That’s the fundamental cause of climate change. Even if the Vatican doesn’t tell us that.”

Gloria Steinem kept her promise to Dr. John Sharpe. Now she is gone, predeceased by the more than 60 million unborn children whose sacrifice she believed to be essential for a free and feminist society. She was a consequential figure, and we are enduring the consequences.