Gloria Steinem Quotes

The idea of not being able to control my own fertility genuinely terrifies me. That one mistake might change your life. That everything I am, and do, could be ended by the repeal of laws our mothers fought so hard for, that women had waited for the entire span of humanity to come about.

Woman must have her freedom; the fundamental freedom of choosing whether or not she shall be a mother and how many children she will have. Regardless of what man's attitude may be, that problem is hers; and before it can be his, it is hers alone.

Contraceptive protection is something every woman must have access to, to control her own destiny.

Being able to control your reproduction is essential to women's ability to flourish in the United States.

All of women's aspirations--whether for education, work, or any form of self-determination--ultimately rest on their ability to decide whether and when to bear children. For this reason, reproductive freedom has always been the most popular item in each of the successive feminist agendas--and the most heavily assaulted target of each backlash.

The management of fertility is one of the most important functions of adulthood.

Is it a recent occurrence that women have tried to control when and if they reproduced? Absolutely not. By 2000 B.C., there was worldwide use of herbal potions to prevent pregnancy. Condoms were made from animal bladders.

For most women, including women who want to have children, contraception is not an option; it is a basic health care necessity.

Margaret Sanger didn't just introduce the idea of birth control into our culture at large, she freed women from indenture to their bodies.

World fertility surveys indicate that anywhere from one third to one half of the babies born in the Third World would not be if their mothers had access to cheap, reliable family planning, had enough personal empowerment to stand up to their husbands and relatives, and could choose their own family size.

I feel very strongly about contraception even though I know people say that, as a good Catholic girl, I shouldn't. But I disagree because I think one of the keys to women's progression in the 20th century is being able to control their fertility.

It is not because woman is lacking in responsibility, but because she has too much of the latter that she demands to know how to prevent conception.

We support reproductive rights and will stand with women and men around the country to support keeping abortion and birth control safe, legal and accessible.

We’ve come a long way from more than a century ago when contraception was illegal, to today when—for the first time—all women may have access to free Birth Control…. It’s a personal choice, whether or not to use methods like “the pill.” But it’s to society’s great benefit to make sure every woman has this option.

Reproductive choice is a fundamental human right and we can never take it for granted. On this issue, you're either with us or against us.

…American women… have learned it should be for them to decide when and how often they shall take upon themselves the sacred duties of motherhood, but as law and custom give to the husband absolute control of the wife’s person, she is forced to not only violate physical law, but to outrage the holiest instincts of her being to maintain even a semblance of that freedom which by nature belongs to every human soul.

Birth control is the first important step woman must take toward the goal of her freedom. It is the first step she must take to be man’s equal. It is the first step they must both take toward human emancipation.

The question of regulating birth rates is highly complex and that any standardized, dogmatic solution "for all time and all peoples" would be wrong.

No government should dictate whether or when we should have children….Reproductive freedom is a basic human right.

If you want to control human reproduction you have to control women’s bodies.

The U.S. Constitution guarantees women across this country, including my daughters, the right to choose for themselves when and how to start their families. Yet, more than forty years after Roe v. Wade, women's reproductive rights remain in jeopardy.

If you want to truly stand up for women's reproductive rights, then stand against birth control. Because nothing says anti-woman more than birth control.

A woman has the right to choose her reproductive health care.

The greatest issue is to raise the question of birth control out of the gutter of obscenity ... into the light of intelligence and human understanding.

Reproductive freedom means economic freedom. And that's what this debate is about.