Pondering what Gloria Steinem now knows
“A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle.”
“If men could get pregnant, abortion would be a sacrament.”
Neither of those feminist slogans originated with Gloria Steinem, who credited writer Irina Dunn with the first and “an old Irish woman taxi driver in Boston” with the second.
It is understandable that so many attributed the words to Steinem, who died September at age 92; not only did she gleefully repeat them, her own rhetoric echoed or expanded on the sentiments as she became the face of second wave feminism for six decades.
Myriad obits detail the simple facts of Steinem’s life; nearly all mention her fear of public speaking, her stint working as a Playboy Bunny for research, her time as a CIA asset, her founding of both Ms. Magazine and Choice USA, now called “Unite for Reproductive and Gender Equity” (URGE). Most also mention an illegal abortion at age 22.
Cause and effect
Steinem certainly seemed a textbook example of an “iconic trailblazer,” but it’s worth considering whether Steinem, who was comfortable tracing the causality of patriarchal oppressions, pondered cause-and-effect when it came to her own movement, or indeed, her own life.
Recall that Steinem, after having helped create the very culture that demands conformity of political thought and language on pain of “cancellation,” on multiple occasions had to hedge her own free expression. Criticized by her admirers for giving then-President Bill Clinton a pass for sexual hijinks in the Oval Office, she later admitted, “I wouldn’t write the same thing, now.”
Explaining young voter support for Bernie Sanders, Steinem said, “When you’re young, you’re thinking, ‘Where are the boys?’ The boys are with Bernie.” That brought heavy condemnation and forced a public apology.
Even Steinem’s marriage, at age 66, necessitated an arduous explanation that (thanks to her own life’s work), the institution had suitably evolved enough for her participation. She added, “I hope this proves … that feminism is about the ability to choose what’s right at each time of our lives.”
Indeed, Steinem had the right to choose something as human, natural and basic as marriage, but her words about respecting choices never seemed to extend to a choice for life. URGE, which she founded in 1992, was established specifically to support and train pro-abortion activists; it campaigns against crisis pregnancy centers while promoting “self-managed abortion.”
‘No biological children’
Nearly every account of Steinem’s life mentions that she had “no biological children.” Few directly connect that to her 1957 abortion, about which Steinem declared she had no regrets, “I used to sit … trying to make myself feel guilty. But I never could!”
That brings up tired old tropes about the wickedness of “Catholic guilt” and contemporary notions that guilty feelings are inarguably bad. But there is a difference between hopeless, unrelieved guilt, which can be oppressive unto self-destruction, and the searing regret that can emerge from a fully-formed conscience and which, when acknowledged, can recognize and co-operate with grace and mercy; it can be relieved.
In a 1992 lecture about her book, “Revolution from Within: A Book of Self-Esteem” Steinem wrote, “We live in an either/or world.” Perhaps that narrow view explains her inability to feel either guilt or regret: In such a world, only self-justification could escape the black side.
She was wrong, though. Even in civil law we see nuances that recognize the both/and circumstances of real life: The killing of another can be murder, manslaughter, self-defense, depraved indifference or reckless endangerment. Catholicism pronounces that all abortion is sinful, yet too understands that life is a “both/and” mystery where humans do terrible things to themselves and each other; it recognizes regret, and offers Christ’s own forgiveness and mercy.
The love of God
“I really only love God as much as I love the person I love the least.” — Dorothy Day
Paraphrasing Jesus (1 Jn 40:20), the Servant of God Dorothy Day, another trailblazing social activist and foundress, underwent an illegal abortion in 1919. Though an atheist at the time, the experience left her keenly regretful.
She was lifted from her misery only when delivered of her second child, feeling such thankfulness for her daughter that “The final object of this love and gratitude was God.” She found the both/and that defeated any temptation to self-justify, or to call black white, or good bad.
Many people would argue that Steinem did indeed have a biological child, one whose human reality was not obliterated in abortion. Those who believe in an afterlife can understandably hope that he or she was there, within the “tunnel of light” so commonly described in near-death experiences, as she passed over.
While emphatically making no judgement on the state of her soul because God understands all of us more than we ever can, and loves all of us, despite ourselves — even (perhaps especially) those we don’t like very much, at all — one hopes that Ms. Steinem’s sure knowledge, peddled so widely while she lived, is now enlightened and complete.
Elizabeth Scalia is editor-at-large for OSV. Follow her on X @theanchoress.
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