It is about 17349281423437 times a day that Jezebel—and (most of) its readers—will fiercely defend the right to our “reproductive freedom”—the intersection of letting people do whatever the hell they want, on their terms, with their own bodies. But on Wednesday, September 2, we lost the lifelong advocate, feminist, and journalist we have to thank for coining the catch-all term in the first place.
According to a statement shared on her Instagram page, Gloria Steinem has died, age 92, in her New York City home “surrounded by some of the many who loved her.” She leaves behind an honorable trail of accolades, spanning co-founding Ms. magazine; campaigning for abortion rights and against domestic violence; and earning several lofty recognitions for her work, such as the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
“Gloria’s greatest gift was her ability to listen to others, to make others feel seen and heard,” the post reads. “Her words, actions, and example gave people permission to be their truest selves. Gloria lived true to her independent spirit, always with curiosity and a great sense of humor.”
Famously, Steinem launched her career in journalism in 1963, after posing as an undercover Playboy Bunny to write an exposé on the abysmal working conditions at Hugh Hefner’s club. A year earlier, she’d written for Esquire a feature called “the Moral Disarmament of Betty Coed,” challenging the limits of new birth control, and how it forced women to choose between family and work. (Take notes, Erika Kirk.) She also once wrote an article called, “If Men Could Menstruate”; argued that “a liberated woman is one who has sex before marriage and a job after”; and, speaking to Splinter in 2015, said “gender issues are societal issues.”
Throughout her life, Steinem also became the “face of feminism” and a profound voice in championing women’s reproductive rights—often backdropped by her own experience of having an abortion in England at age 22, despite an abortion ban. Her 2015 memoir, “My Life on the Road,” is dedicated to the doctor who referred her to a woman who performed her abortion.
Speaking to Al Jazeera in 2019, Steinem criticized the abortion debate and its framing between “pro-choice” and “pro-life” as misleading: “Nobody would choose one if they didn’t have to.” She had coined the phrase “reproductive freedom” while writing a piece for New York Magazine about an abortion rally in New York—ultimately expanding a once-narrow debate into a broader human right.
After the Supreme Court killed Roe in 2022, Steinem told AP: “Obviously, without the right of women and men to make decisions about our own bodies, there is no democracy.”
