The Daily: Gloria Steinem on Abortion Rights

May 13, 2022

Welcome to the weekend. This week, we wrapped up our two-part series covering the reaction to the news that abortion rights will likely be restricted by the Supreme Court this year.

First, we heard from anti-abortion activists about where they would turn their fight now that it appears they have won a major, longstanding legal battle. Then, we spoke with abortion providers about their reaction to the news — and the choices they may face in maintaining both their professions and their principles.

Below, Gloria Steinem, leading feminist activist and author, adds her perspective to the conversation, reflecting on the draft majority opinion leak, democratic backsliding and her life in the public eye.

The big idea: Where does the abortion rights movement go next?

This interview has been condensed and lightly edited.

Celeste Sloman for The New York Times

You said this moment felt "new and angering and ancient." What feels new about it to you?

The idea that this fundamental human right of reproductive freedom and justice could be restricted again. This is a struggle in my life that has been going on since the 1950s. And the first speak-out that I remember about abortion and reproductive freedom was in 1969. It seems repetitive and cruel, but also somewhat inevitable, since patriarchy, by definition, is about controlling women's bodies. And we are still in something of a patriarchy, as we can see by who is in the White House, who is in Congress, who is in state legislatures. And it's something of a racial patriarchy, too.

Have you always been worried about the growing backlash against Roe?

It's more broad than Roe. Unless each individual person has decision making power over our own bodies, men and women, we're not living in a democracy.

Do you think this draft opinion is a sign of "democratic backsliding?"

Authoritarian movements tend to start by restricting women because we have wombs. Hitler, after he was elected, declared abortion a crime against the state.

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What would you say to someone who said that they identified both as anti-abortion rights and also as a feminist?

I would say to them: Feminism will protect your right not to have an abortion, just as it protects the right of a woman who wishes to have an abortion to do so in safety. Reproductive freedom means what it says. It means the right to have or not to have children.

So you're comfortable with anti-abortion activists identifying as feminists?

It depends if those anti-abortion activists are trying to deprive other women of the right to reproductive freedom. That's different than if they are defending their own right.

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Then there is, of course, the broader critique of modern feminism: that it has become diluted by its universality and even co-opted by capitalist forces. How would you respond?

Feminism is not a public relations tactic. It's a human rights revolution.

You once quoted Susan B. Anthony saying, "Our job is not to make young women grateful. It's to make them ungrateful." What do you hope that you've made young women ungrateful for?

Anything less than full equality, opportunity, ability to pursue their dreams.

I think we have made progress. I mean, at the end of the '60s, when there was the very first abortion speak-out, to my knowledge, anyway, here in New York City, just women standing up and telling the stories of their abortions was revolutionary. That has changed a lot.

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The need for abortion has also diminished. It was once roughly one in three American women needed an abortion at some time in her life. The abortion rate is now roughly 13 out of 1,000 women annually. The necessity of abortion has diminished because of the morning after pill. And also because more men are sharing responsibility for contraception.

The ongoing antagonism toward abortion is about controlling women and also about racism.

You can read the full conversation here.

From The Daily team: A taxi driver's plight

Owning a New York City taxi once seemed a guaranteed route to financial security. Uber and other ride-hailing apps have upended that.Hiroko Masuike/The New York Times

Compiled by Desiree Ibekwe

News Assistant, Audio

In the latest interview in our series about our team's favorite episodes, we asked our producer Jessica Cheung about her favorite show that she had a hand in making.

Her choice was a throwback to the early days of The Daily: "The Taxi Driver's Plight," an episode from the summer of 2018, which took a look at a mental health crisis among New York's yellow-taxi drivers. Here is what she had to say about it.

How did this episode come about?

It was in my first weeks at The Daily. I had attended the big 9 a.m. meeting, where all the desk editors take stock of their stories, and there was a story from Metro about a string of suicides among New York City taxi drivers. I came back to the team, as we always do after that meeting, and told them about it. We talked about it a little bit more and thought: Let's try and find a taxi driver.

How did you find a taxi driver to speak with?

I called the union — the New York City Taxi Workers Alliance — and asked if there was someone we could talk to, possibly a friend of Nicanor Ochisor, a driver who had recently died by suicide.

Within almost 30 minutes, they wrote back with the cellphone number of a taxi driver called Nicolae Hent. He was stuck in a long line waiting to pick up passengers at Kennedy Airport when we reached him. But we asked him to come to The New York Times building to pick us up so we could interview him for an hour while we paid for a ride. We all climbed into the taxi. Two producers — Annie Brown, Theo Balcomb — and Michael Barbaro sat at the back and I was sitting shotgun with the microphones.

You conducted the entire interview in a cab?!

We rode around New York, from uptown all the way to the World Trade Center and back to the Times building. It started very lighthearted. We asked him about the lunch that he kept in the compartment between the two seats, he lifted it up and showed us the mini cooler his wife had packed for him. Then we asked about his friend and came to learn about the crushing debt that they both had because of the medallion — a permit — that they had bought from the city. The value of it was decreasing and, on top of the debt they owed, taxi drivers were subject to all these fees and regulations that weren't imposed on Uber and Lyft workers. All of this meant drivers were living on the margins because of what they owed and earned.

Why does this episode stick out as a favorite?

I think some of the best stories of The Daily are when you go in with an assumption — and it's an assumption that a lot of people have — and then over the course of reporting the story and talking to people that assumption is undone and the truth is way more surprising than you think.

I also felt like we were on the early side of this story. This was a year before our colleague Brian Rosenthal's great reporting on predatory medallion loans that devastated people like Nicanor and Nicolae. Our conversation with Nicolae was just the tip of the iceberg of what we know now.