Why a Doctor Told Gloria Steinem: ‘You Must Promise Me Two Things’

When Gloria Steinem was 22 years old and a recent graduate of Smith College, she found herself sitting in a doctor’s office in London, asking for an abortion. Not long before, she had slipped off her engagement ring, tucked it under her fiancé’s pillow and, in her words, fled. She was headed to India on a fellowship, leaving behind the comfortable domestic life expected of her, and walking into a future that must have looked awfully fuzzy even without an unwanted pregnancy blurring her path forward. This was 1957, and elective abortion was illegal in both the United States and...