When Gloria Steinem and I speak, five days ahead of the midterm elections, she has already cast her ballot. “I’m glad I voted by mail, so I’m sure that my vote is in there,” she says. We’re talking on the phone, Steinem from Manhattan’s Upper East Side in New York City.
She has resided in the area since 1966, when she was 31 and at the beginning of a career that would make her one of the foremost figures of American feminism. Roe v Wade — the landmark Supreme Court decision that guaranteed a woman’s federal right to abortion — wouldn’t be published for another seven years, in 1973. The decision stood for most of Steinem’s life. Then, in June of 2022, about three months before our conversation, the Supreme Court overturned it, triggering full and near-total bans in several states.
