Gloria Steinem's Death Splits Left and Right Over Abortion Legacy
Intra-Party Split Detected
Left-leaning outlets largely celebrate Steinem's feminist legacy, though Jacobin dissents from mainstream progressive praise, criticizing her CIA ties and framing her as a 'neoliberal' figure who steered feminism away from socialist roots.
Left says
- •Steinem's decades of activism helped make abortion access, workplace equality, and reproductive freedom mainstream political causes rather than fringe demands.
- •Her personal openness about her own abortion, obtained illegally in the 1950s, humanized a decision millions of women have made and helped destigmatize a once-taboo subject.
- •She popularized feminism as joyful, glamorous, and inclusive rather than dour or man-hating, drawing in generations of women who might otherwise have been alienated from the movement.
- •Critics on the left note her feminism sometimes aligned too comfortably with corporate and establishment interests, including her past CIA-linked activities, rather than pursuing a more radical, class-conscious politics.
Right says
- •Steinem's framing of abortion as essential to female achievement suggests women can only succeed by ending a pregnancy, which many see as demeaning to motherhood and to women who choose to carry children.
- •Her own abortion, and the child that resulted, represent a life that never had the chance to make its own choices, a reality some believe her legacy consistently minimized.
- •Her broader worldview—skeptical of marriage, the nuclear family, and traditional roles—is viewed as dismissive of women who find fulfillment in those institutions rather than in career or activism.
- •The celebratory tone of many obituaries is seen as glossing over the moral weight of a movement that normalized abortion as a routine act of self-determination rather than a serious ethical question.
Common Take
High Consensus- Gloria Steinem was among the most influential and widely recognized feminist figures of the 20th century.
- She co-founded Ms. magazine and spent decades organizing around women's rights issues.
- Abortion rights were central to her public identity and activism throughout her life.
- Her death has prompted widespread public reflection on the meaning and consequences of the feminist movement she helped lead.
The Arguments
Left argues
Steinem's public openness about her own illegal abortion in the 1950s helped destigmatize a decision millions of women have made, transforming a shameful secret into a subject that could be discussed and legislated on openly.
Right counters
Destigmatizing the act does nothing to address the moral status of the unborn child; normalizing language like 'choice' and 'reproductive freedom' arguably just made it easier to avoid confronting what critics see as the ending of a human life.
Right argues
Framing abortion as the gateway to women 'directing their lives' implies that motherhood and career achievement are fundamentally incompatible, which is demeaning both to women who choose to carry pregnancies to term and to the child whose entire potential future was foreclosed.
Left counters
Steinem never argued that motherhood was incompatible with achievement for those who chose it freely; her point was that forcing pregnancy on women who did not choose it foreclosed their futures, and that removing that coercion is what let women pursue either path on their own terms.
Left argues
Steinem made feminism accessible and appealing—witty, glamorous, and inclusive—rather than dour or alienating, which helped bring millions of women who might otherwise have rejected the label into the movement.
Right counters
A glamorous packaging doesn't change the substance of a worldview that critics say devalued marriage, motherhood, and the nuclear family; making a message more palatable is not the same as making it correct.
Right argues
The celebratory tone of most obituaries elides the deeper ethical weight of a movement that helped normalize abortion as routine self-determination rather than treating it as a serious moral question involving a second, voiceless party.
Left counters
Treating abortion with gravity is compatible with supporting the right to choose; acknowledging complexity doesn't require accepting the premise that a fertilized embryo or early fetus has the same moral status as the woman making the decision.
Left argues
Steinem's activism helped move abortion access, workplace equality, and reproductive freedom from fringe demands into mainstream political causes, reshaping law and culture across generations.
Right counters
Mainstreaming a practice does not make it just; slavery and other historical wrongs were once mainstream too, and critics argue that cultural acceptance of abortion reflects a moral blind spot rather than genuine progress.
Challenge Questions
These questions target genuine internal contradictions — meant to provoke honest reflection.
Right asks Left
“If Steinem's framing of abortion as essential to 'directing one's life' is not meant to imply that motherhood limits a woman's potential, why did so much of her broader rhetoric characterize marriage, family, and traditional roles as tools of oppression rather than valid choices among equals?”
Left asks Right
“If the right's objection is fundamentally about protecting the unborn child's future autonomy and choices, how does that principle square with opposition to social supports—like paid leave, childcare, and healthcare access—that would make it easier for women to actually choose to carry pregnancies to term?”
Outlier Report
Left Fringe
Jacobin's characterization of Steinem as a 'godmother of neoliberal feminism' tied to CIA collaboration represents a small far-left critique (roughly 5-10% of the left) that sees her as insufficiently radical/anti-capitalist rather than too radical.
Right Fringe
Blaze Media's columns explicitly comparing Steinem's abortion to murder and drawing analogies to convicted child-murderer Lindsay Clancy represent an extreme framing even among pro-life conservatives; this rhetorical intensity likely reflects roughly 15-20% of the right's most religiously conservative, activist commentariat rather than the median Republican or independent pro-life voter.
Noise Assessment
High noise ratio: obituary coverage tends to attract performative ideological point-scoring from opinion writers on both sides, while most ordinary Americans likely hold more measured, mixed views about a controversial cultural figure who died of old age rather than engaging in the maximalist framings presented in these op-eds.
Sources (7)
<img alt="Gloria Steinem announces abortion activism in NY" class="webfeedsFeaturedVisual wp-post-image" src="https://thefederalist.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/09/Screenshot-2026-09-03-at-1.36.58-PM-1200x675.png" style="display: block; margin: auto; margin-bottom: 5px;" />Demanding abortion so women can ‘direct their lives’ is not empowering. It’s reductionist, insulting, and downright anti-woman.
<img src="https://www.theblaze.com/media-library/the-child-gloria-steinem-left-out-of-the-story.jpg?id=67726176&width=1245&height=700&coordinates=0%2C53%2C0%2C54" /><br /><br /><p>They say diamonds are forever, but so are humans. We do not stop existing at the death of our bodies. And that is why the death of Gloria Steinem should cause us to think seriously about more than her political legacy as a leftist activist.</p><p><a href="https://apnews.com/article/gloria-steinem-dies-724836935f6547fda60f361c15238d14" target="_blank">Steinem died Wednesday at age 92</a>. She will be remembered as one of the most influential feminists of the last century, a co-founder of Ms. magazine, and a leader in the movement that made abortion a defining element of modern feminism.</p><p class="pull-quote">Gloria Steinem’s death should remind us that human beings are forever. That makes killing infinitely more serious than our culture wants to admit.</p><p>But there is another person whose life must be remembered when we remember Steinem: the unborn child she aborted.</p><p>Steinem became pregnant at 22. She had broken off an engagement and was preparing to leave for India. Abortion was illegal in Britain except in limited circumstances, but a physician, John Sharpe, helped her obtain one.</p><p>Decades later, Steinem dedicated her memoir, “<a href="https://www.amazon.com/My-Life-Road-Gloria-Steinem/dp/0345408160" target="_blank">My Life on the Road</a>,” to Sharpe. She remembered his words to her: “You must promise me two things.” One was that she not reveal his name. The other was: “You will do what you want to do with your life.”</p><p>Those words summarize an entire moral revolution.</p><p>But what about the <em>other</em> life? What did that child want to do with his or her life?</p><p>That child never went to India. Never went to school. Never chose a career. Never fell in love. Never held a child. Never traveled, wrote a book, changed political parties, found religion, rejected religion, made mistakes, sought forgiveness, or grew old.</p><p>The philosophy supposedly centered on “choice” began by taking every choice away from someone else. There is no higher level of selfishness than to end another person’s life so that person does not get in the way of your own plans.</p><p>What does this tell us about the human heart?</p><p><a href="https://nymag.com/nymetro/news/people/features/2438/" target="_blank">Steinem once said</a>, “I didn’t go to school until I was 12, so I missed a little bit of social conditioning.” She considered freedom from conventional social expectations liberating. That theme ran through her life: question inherited rules, throw off imposed roles, and determine your own destiny. In its most radical form, modern feminism treats human rules as mere social constructs and “being yourself” as acting on your desires without discipline or correction.</p><p><strong>RELATED: <a href="https://www.theblaze.com/columns/opinion/chelsea-clinton-put-a-price-tag-on-abortion" target="_self">Chelsea Clinton put a price tag on abortion</a></strong></p><p class="shortcode-media shortcode-media-rebelmouse-image"> <img alt="" class="rm-shortcode" id="6603a" src="https://www.theblaze.com/media-library/image.jpg?id=67726182&width=980" /> <small class="image-media media-photo-credit">Anthony Kwan/Getty Images for MEBO Group</small></p><p>There is something attractive about that message. Human beings should question unjust traditions. But there is a darker possibility. What if the moral law we are overthrowing is not merely “social conditioning”? What if some acts really are wrong regardless of what society says? Steinem’s questioning was not merely philosophical curiosity. It echoed the sin of Genesis 3: the desire to become one’s own god, even to claim power over the life of another human being.</p><p>The most frightening capacity of the human mind is not ignorance. It is self-justification. We can take something terrible and give it a noble name.</p><p>Steinem did not merely defend her abortion reluctantly. She later <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/video/obituaries/100000011131297/gloria-steinem-obituary-last-word.html" target="_blank">described it</a> as taking “responsibility for my own life.” She said she tried to make herself feel guilty by imagining how old her child would have been. It is as if Dostoevsky’s Raskolnikov had stopped midway through “Crime and Punishment,” still convinced that murder could elevate him above ordinary morality.</p><p>That is chilling precisely because the child disappears from the moral calculation.</p><p>Her life. Her responsibility. Her choice. Her future.</p><p>But another human being had a life too.</p><p>What does this say about the movement that followed her?</p><p>Steinem did not keep this reasoning private. She helped make it a political philosophy.</p><p>Millions of Americans were taught to describe abortion in the language of liberation, autonomy, and reproductive freedom. The unborn child became almost linguistically invisible. We learned to talk endlessly about the woman’s future while refusing to talk about the future being deliberately ended.</p><p>That is how moral revolutions work. They do not normally begin by convincing people to celebrate evil as evil. They rename it as something good.</p><p>Murder becomes “choice.”</p><p>The destruction of a human life becomes “health care.”</p><p>And denying another human being her entire future becomes “doing what you want with your life.”</p><p><strong>RELATED: <a href="https://www.theblaze.com/columns/opinion/that-far-always-becomes-here" target="_self">‘That far’ always becomes here</a></strong></p><p class="shortcode-media shortcode-media-rebelmouse-image"> <img alt="" class="rm-shortcode" id="baa43" src="https://www.theblaze.com/media-library/image.jpg?id=67726186&width=980" /> <small class="image-media media-photo-credit">Mike Coppola/Getty Images</small></p><p>The lesson of Steinem’s life is therefore larger than Steinem. She became influential because millions of people found that reasoning persuasive. A culture embraced the astonishing proposition that equality could be advanced by denying the most defenseless human beings even the equality of being allowed to live.</p><p>And now comes the question death forces upon us.</p><p>Christians believe Gloria Steinem still exists. We also believe her child still exists. Death does not make our actions disappear. It removes our ability to distract ourselves from them.</p><p>Imagine the question that child could ask: <em>Mom, why did you kill me? Why was your future worth more than mine? Why did you get to “do what you want to do with your life” while deciding that I would never get to do anything with mine?</em></p><p>And widen the circle. What of the millions whose deaths were justified by the political movement Steinem helped lead? What happens when slogans about “reproductive freedom” meet the human beings whose lives those slogans helped extinguish?</p><p>Gloria Steinem’s death should remind us that human beings are forever. That makes killing infinitely more serious than our culture wants to admit.</p><p>And it makes repentance, forgiveness, and reconciliation with God infinitely more urgent.</p><p>The great question is not whether history praises us after we die. It is whether the God who gave life agrees with what we did with it. Steinem now stands before His judgment seat.</p>
<img src="https://www.theblaze.com/media-library/gloria-steinem-is-gone-lindsay-clancy-is-still-here.jpg?id=67725649&width=1245&height=700&coordinates=0%2C0%2C0%2C0" /><br /><br /><p>Everything that lives will eventually die. The problem is that in the spring of our youth, the end of our lives feels far away. Because of that, we become cocky and self-assured, casting aside belief in the consequences of the kind of regret that puts things in perspective and, at the end of our lives, reminds us of what was really important.</p><p>Two women are in the news right now. Gloria Steinem, a writer and journalist who just <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/feminist-activist-gloria-steinem-dies-age-92-2026-09-03/" target="_blank" title="Original URL: https://www.reuters.com/world/feminist-activist-gloria-steinem-dies-age-92-2026-09-03/. Click or tap if you trust this link.">died at 92</a>, and Lindsay Clancy, on trial in Massachusetts for the murder of her three children.</p><p class="pull-quote">It will be interesting to see whether what began in a courtroom that at times resembled a women’s rally will elevate a mother with postpartum depression into a feminist icon.</p><p>Steinem was a feminist in the 1960s and ’70s, when it wasn’t popular to be one. She went on to spend her life redefining peace, justice, and racial fairness and fighting for women’s liberation, which came to primarily mean a woman’s right to choose to dispose of her offspring.</p><p>In the eyes of many, Steinem was adored as an activist, even though her idea of equality was rooted in her belief that men, marriage, and children were oppressive because their presence in a woman’s life could deter her from achieving loftier goals.</p><p>At an <a href="https://apnews.com/article/gloria-steinem-dies-724836935f6547fda60f361c15238d14" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank" title="Original URL: https://apnews.com/article/724836935f6547fda60f361c15238d14. Click or tap if you trust this link.">abortion awareness rally in 1969</a>, Steinem listened to other women’s abortion stories. At the time, unless a <a href="https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201719/cmselect/cmwomeq/1584/158405.htm" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank" title="Original URL: https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201719/cmselect/cmwomeq/1584/158405.htm. Click or tap if you trust this link.">woman’s mental or physical health</a> was in danger, abortion was illegal in the U.K. This is somewhat how, at the moment, the seriousness of child murder is in danger of being downplayed if mental illness is identified as a motive.</p><p>Steinem venerated the doctor who, like Henry VIII, approved of Anne Boleyn climbing the scaffold to be beheaded by the man assigned to wield the sword. The doctor referred Steinem for the execution of her unborn child in the womb by <a href="https://www.vogue.com/article/gloria-steinem-duchess-of-sussex-jessica-yellin-roe-v-wade" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank" title="Original URL: https://www.vogue.com/article/gloria-steinem-duchess-of-sussex-jessica-yellin-roe-v-wade. Click or tap if you trust this link.">a practitioner willing to perform the procedure.</a></p><p>In language that is now regarded as heroic and liberating, before doing the deed or referring her to <a href="https://www.vogue.com/article/gloria-steinem-duchess-of-sussex-jessica-yellin-roe-v-wade" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank" title="Original URL: https://www.vogue.com/article/gloria-steinem-duchess-of-sussex-jessica-yellin-roe-v-wade. Click or tap if you trust this link.">a female doctor</a> who did the deed — either way — the willing accomplice made Steinem promise two things: “First, you will not tell anyone my name. Second, you will do what you want to do with your life.”</p><p>Nearly 60 years after her child had been killed, Steinem dedicated her memoir, “My Life on the Road,” to her hero, <a href="https://www.nypl.org/blog/2015/12/01/podcast-gloria-steinem" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank" title="Original URL: https://www.nypl.org/blog/2015/12/01/podcast-gloria-steinem. Click or tap if you trust this link.">Dr. John Sharpe</a>.</p><p>Around that time, Steinem was widely viewed as a crusader for abortion rights, calling it “reproductive freedom,” a watered-down slogan she thought would make the subject more palatable in political discussion and a phrase that continues to be used in abortion debates to this day.</p><p>But now, Steinem is dead, and her legacy will be credited with having spent the lion’s share of her earthly existence downplaying the value of life while exalting a woman’s right to dispose of her children.</p><p><strong>RELATED: <a href="https://www.theblaze.com/columns/opinion/did-lindsay-clancy-lose-her-mind-or-her-free-will" target="_self">Did Lindsay Clancy lose her mind — or her free will?</a></strong></p><p class="shortcode-media shortcode-media-rebelmouse-image"> <img alt="" class="rm-shortcode" id="684b8" src="https://www.theblaze.com/media-library/image.jpg?id=67725542&width=980" /> <small class="image-media media-photo-credit">David L. Ryan/The Boston Globe/Getty Images</small></p><p>Gloria Steinem, in life and now in death, will be idolized as an icon for women who embraced the idea that liberation is the right for a woman to snuff out life in the womb.</p><p>Her glowing death <a href="https://www.yahoo.com/news/us/articles/gloria-steinem-dies-age-92-124410977.html" target="_blank">announcement</a> states that she “passed away peacefully at her home in New York City, surrounded by some of the many who loved her.” It is stunning that someone gets to pass away peacefully after spending a lifetime advocating the slaughter of the unborn.</p><p>The sad truth is that the “many who loved her” circling her bed did not include the son or daughter who would have been entering the seventh decade at the time of their mother’s death. What that touching announcement didn’t mention was whether she finally felt the regret she admitted she couldn’t muster for 69 years over the decision to sacrifice her child on the altar of ambition.</p><p>Despite all the books, speaking engagements, and accolades laid at Steinem’s feet, as the totality of her life flashed before her eyes, the son or daughter over whom success took precedence, whether she was capable or willing to admit it, may have been the last thing to cross her mind before passing into eternity.</p><p>Surely her progressive contribution to advancing a woman’s right to decide whether life inside her womb survives is Gloria’s legacy.</p><p>Now, nearly seven decades after Steinem’s backroom abortion, another woman with the potential to be a progressive pioneer in the fight for a mother’s rights over the lives of her children has been sitting in a wheelchair in a courtroom in Plymouth, Massachusetts. At the time Steinem terminated her child’s life, it was illegal unless a woman was physically or mentally ill. Today, mental illness is exploited as a defense in a trial where three children were executed by their mother.</p><p>Although it might not look like it, the female support surrounding Lindsay Clancy is similar to the support Steinem received in 1969, when women rallied because they felt no one understood their plight. At this juncture in the Clancy trial, although Clancy’s children, unlike Gloria’s, were outside the womb, the willingness to call her innocent hinges solely on her mental state: guilty if she had her wherewithal, exonerated if mental illness drove her to murder her babies.</p><p>In Clancy’s case, the thoughts and feelings of her children concern not whether they had regrets, but rather what kind of terror a confused preschooler, toddler, and infant experienced as their mother, for whatever reason, decided they no longer had the right to life.</p><p>How different is what Lindsay Clancy did — for whatever the reason — from Gloria’s youthful decision to benefit herself?</p><p><strong>RELATED: <a href="https://www.theblaze.com/columns/opinion/that-far-always-becomes-here" target="_blank">‘That far’ always becomes here</a></strong></p><p class="shortcode-media shortcode-media-rebelmouse-image image-crop-16x9"> <img alt="" class="rm-shortcode" id="7ade4" src="https://www.theblaze.com/media-library/image.jpg?id=67725707&width=1245&height=700&quality=50&coordinates=6%2C0%2C7%2C0" /> <small class="image-media media-photo-credit">erhui1979/iStock/Getty Images</small></p><p>As these thoughts come full-circle, it’s important to consider the impact Gloria Steinem had on the deaths of <a href="https://nrlc.org/communications/nrl-releases-eleventh-annual-report-the-state-of-abortion-in-the-us/" target="_blank" title="Original URL: https://nrlc.org/communications/nrl-releases-eleventh-annual-report-the-state-of-abortion-in-the-us/. Click or tap if you trust this link.">more than 65 million</a> unborn children and how she’s being celebrated and mourned, in light of the potential Lindsay Clancy’s defense might have as an excuse to deny the right to life to those of us outside the womb.</p><p>Steinem’s actions helped reshape the nation’s views on abortion. In the same way, Clancy could change the nation’s views on maternal filicide. And after <a href="https://www.wbur.org/news/2026/09/01/massachusetts-lindsay-clancy-insanity-defense-criminal-liability" target="_blank" title="Original URL: https://www.wbur.org/news/2026/09/01/massachusetts-lindsay-clancy-insanity-defense-criminal-liability. Click or tap if you trust this link.">postpartum psychosis</a> is accepted as an excuse to kill three children, what’s the next step in the progression for those who move through life like a horse with blinders?</p><p>If the progressive impulse to excuse the killing of children in the womb extends to children outside it, Lindsay Clancy’s case could have consequences far beyond her trial — potentially eroding the right to life even more profoundly than Gloria Steinem’s abortion activism did.</p><p>Gloria Steinem is gone. Lindsay Clancy is still here. It will be interesting to see whether what began in a courtroom that at times resembled a women’s rally will elevate a mother with postpartum depression into a feminist icon who moves the needle from excusing child murder to finding any other excuse to dispose of human life because societal mores demand it.</p><p>Steinem’s opportunity to influence the culture is over. Cases like Lindsay Clancy’s may only be beginning.</p>
Gloria Steinem died this week at age 92. The establishment’s favorite “radical” feminist, Steinem worked with the CIA to promote reactionary propaganda and helped direct the women’s liberation movement into a corporate-friendly, anti-socialist direction.
Women are becoming the men they wanted to marry. <img src="https://i0.wp.com/www.nationalreview.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/09/Gloria-Steinem.jpg?fit=617%2C360&ssl=1" />
<p>Katha Pollitt</p> <div><img alt="" src="https://www.thenation.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/09/gloria-steinem-obit-getty.jpg" /></div> <div> <div class="wp-block-the-nation-dek article-title__dek"> <p>Second-wave feminism has an undeserved reputation for being dour, man-hating, racist. Gloria was the antidote: She was witty, fun-loving, and glamorous.</p> </div> </div> <p>The post <a href="https://www.thenation.com/article/society/gloria-steinem-sisterhood-obit/">Sisterhood Was Gloria Steinem’s Guiding Principle</a> appeared first on <a href="https://www.thenation.com">The Nation</a>.</p>
<p>Joan Walsh</p> <div><img alt="" src="https://www.thenation.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/09/Gloria.jpg" /></div> <div> <div class="wp-block-the-nation-dek article-title__dek"> <p>The feminist icon lived the struggle for gender equality and always found time to lend support and solidarity to other women leaders, even in her final days.</p> </div> </div> <p>The post <a href="https://www.thenation.com/article/activism/gloria-steinem-feminism/">Gloria Steinem’s Many-Splendored Feminist Life </a> appeared first on <a href="https://www.thenation.com">The Nation</a>.</p>