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Who really said it

If Men Could Get Pregnant, Abortion Would Be a Sacrament

Not Florynce Kennedy — an unnamed Boston taxi driver Unknown — an elderly Irish woman driving a Boston taxi Active 1971 · never identified
Kennedy and Steinem both pointed away from themselves In copyright

This one is unusual: the two famous women it is credited to both tried to give it back. Florynce Kennedy is the earliest person documented saying it in public — at a Washington rally on 15 May 1971 — and Gloria Steinem put it in her speeches the same year. But Steinem said for decades that neither of them coined it. She and Kennedy heard it from the elderly Irish woman driving their taxi in Boston while they talked about Kennedy’s book Abortion Rap, and Steinem’s regret was always that “I didn’t get her name.”

Last verified 10 Oct 2026 · how we verify · spot an error?

For presentations

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Disputed credit — copy with the correction

“If Men Could Get Pregnant, Abortion Would Be a Sacrament” Quote Investigator concludes this saying should be credited to an anonymous Boston taxi driver. Florynce Kennedy is the earliest person documented using it publicly — at a Washington, D.C. rally on 15 May 1971, reported in Off Our Backs that June — and Gloria Steinem, who was in the cab with her, credited “its elderly Irish woman driver” in her 1983 book Outrageous Acts and Everyday Rebellions: “Honey, if men could get pregnant, abortion would be a sacrament.”

The slide-ready mistake: crediting this to Florynce Kennedy. Use the credit shown above instead.

Can you use it?

Still under copyright (rights held by Off Our Backs, Inc. (1971 article)). A short, credited quote is generally fine for talks, teaching, and internal decks; for commercial, published, or large-scale reuse, get permission.

Image direction — grounded in this quote’s real context; paste into your image tool

In context

Evoking the themes of power, justice and change. Theme: "If Men Could Get Pregnant, Abortion Would Be a Sacrament". Atmospheric and restrained, cinematic directional light, a muted period-appropriate palette, fine grain and texture. Compose with generous empty space for the quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.

Minimalist

Minimalist editorial slide for the quote "If Men Could Get Pregnant, Abortion Would Be a Sacrament". Clean background, a single muted accent color, generous negative space, subtle paper or linen texture, no literal illustration — let the words carry it. Reserve clear space for a serif quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.

Provenance

The source

Earliest printing
Off Our Backs: A Women’s News Journal, vol. 1, no. 23
Published
24 June 1971, page 20 — reporting a rally held 15 May 1971 in Washington, D.C.
Spoken by
Florynce Kennedy, from the platform — the earliest documented public use
Credited originator
An unnamed elderly Irish woman driving a Boston taxi, 1971

Florynce Kennedy, author of Abortion Rap defined the situation with her usual clarity: “If men could get pregnant, abortion would be a sacrament.” She also read parts of the Metropolitan Abortion Alliance’s statement on the media and urged a national boycott of the media sponsors.

This is the earliest printing Quote Investigator located, and note what it does and does not establish: Kennedy said the sentence in public in May 1971. It says nothing about who first thought of it — and the cabdriver account surfaces in print within months.

Quote Investigator: the full 1971 chronology

How we verified this

  • The chronology is Quote Investigator’s ↗, built from ten dated citations across 1971–2006. Its conclusion: “this quotation should be ascribed to an anonymous taxi driver in Boston. Florynce Kennedy and Gloria Steinem disseminated the saying and helped it to obtain an enduring spot in the cultural milieu.”
  • The cabdriver credit is not a late rationalisation. It reaches print in the Winter 1971–72 issue of Aphra: The Feminist Literary Magazine, which prints the line attributed to “woman cabdriver to Florynce Kennedy and Diane Schulder, 1971” — Schulder being Kennedy’s co-author on Abortion Rap.
  • Steinem told the same story in her own book twelve years later: Outrageous Acts and Everyday Rebellions ↗ (Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1983) recalls “Talking with Flo about her first book, Abortion Rap, in a Boston taxi and hearing its elderly Irish woman driver say the much-to-be-quoted words.” We confirmed that edition’s details against the Internet Archive record.
  • An independent source reaches the same split verdict: Wikipedia’s article on Kennedy ↗ states the phrase “is sometimes attributed to Kennedy, although Gloria Steinem attributed it to ‘an old Irish woman taxi driver in Boston’ whom she said she and Kennedy met.”
In copyright

The earliest printing is a 1971 issue of Off Our Backs, which remains in copyright, as does Steinem’s 1983 memoir. The sentence itself was spoken by someone who was never identified, so no author or estate can be named for it — and nothing about it is in the public domain on age, since 1971 is well after the 1931 cutoff.

Rights status is our research, not legal advice — and copyright varies by country and edition. For commercial or published use, confirm with the rightsholder. See terms.

Fact-check

Often misattributed

Three well-known women have been credited with this line. Two of them said it often and neither claimed it; the third never said it at all.

Florynce Kennedy Said it first in public — but did not coin it

Kennedy is genuinely the earliest documented speaker, at the May 1971 rally, and Ms. magazine credited the line to her ↗ in March 1973 — in an article written by Steinem. But the cabdriver account was already in print by Winter 1971, naming Kennedy as one of the two listeners.

Gloria Steinem Spread it, and spent decades disclaiming it

Newsweek quoted her using it in August 1971 and a reader’s letter credited her with it that September. She corrected the record repeatedly — in her 1983 book ↗ and again in a 2006 Boston Globe interview: “I’ve always been so sorry that I didn’t get her name.”

Germaine Greer Not in The Female Eunuch

A quotation database credits Greer, citing The Female Eunuch (1970). Quote Investigator checked: the line “was not actually included in The Female Eunuch” — and 1970 would in any case predate every documented appearance.

An unnamed Boston taxi driver The credit that keeps being given

Described only as an elderly Irish woman, she said it to Kennedy and Diane Schulder — or to Kennedy and Steinem, depending on which account you read — in a Boston cab in 1971, and was never identified. Quote Investigator ↗ credits her.

The two famous women both pointed at the same stranger. Quote Investigator’s verdict is that the line belongs to “an anonymous taxi driver in Boston”, and that Kennedy and Steinem are why the rest of us know it — a distinction between origin and circulation that this saying illustrates about as cleanly as any.

Context

Why it mattered

When Kennedy said it in May 1971, Roe v. Wade had not been decided — the ruling came in January 1973 ↗. The sentence did a particular kind of work in that moment: it reframed a question being argued in theological terms as a question about who holds power, in one line short enough to fit on a placard. Within six months of Kennedy saying it from a platform, it was on placards — an Associated Press report that November describes marchers on Pennsylvania Avenue carrying exactly these words.

Its authorship is part of the point. The best evidence says the most quotable formulation of the era’s argument was coined not by either movement leader it is pinned on, but by an elderly working woman driving them across Boston — who was never named, and who both of them kept trying to credit.

Both famous women spent years handing the credit back to a stranger neither could name.

Read the full story

The documentary trail runs fast and in public. Off Our Backs reported Kennedy using it at a 15 May 1971 rally. Newsweek’s August 1971 profile of Steinem quoted her “speaking in pithy anger” with the same words to college students and welfare mothers alike. By the Winter 1971–72 issue of Aphra, a feminist literary magazine was already printing it as the cabdriver’s line. In March 1973 Steinem’s Ms. article “The Verbal Karate of Florynce R. Kennedy, Esq.” listed it among Kennedy’s sayings — which is how the Kennedy credit hardened, from a piece written by the person who elsewhere insisted neither of them wrote it.

Steinem’s fullest telling came in 2006: “Years ago, I was in a taxi in Boston or Cambridge. There was an old Irish woman taxi driver. Flo Kennedy, the civil rights activist, was my speaking partner at the time. We were sitting in the back talking about abortion and the taxi driver turned around and she said, ‘Honey, if men could get pregnant, abortion would be a sacrament.’” The accounts differ on one detail worth flagging rather than smoothing: the 1971 Aphra credit names Kennedy and Diane Schulder as the passengers, while Steinem’s own recollections place herself and Kennedy in the cab.

Explore

Filed under

More provenance-checked quotes on the same theme, each with its reuse status.

Power Justice Change

Go further

Dig deeper

Trusted places to keep pulling the thread — primary archives, fact-checks, and scholarship. We show how we used each one before you leave.

Quote Investigator: if men could get pregnantquoteinvestigator.com

The anchor investigation: the June 1971 Off Our Backs report, the Winter 1971 Aphra cabdriver credit, Steinem’s 1983 and 2006 accounts, and the Germaine Greer error.
Outrageous Acts and Everyday Rebellions (1983)archive.org

Steinem’s book, Holt, Rinehart and Winston 1983 — page 8 carries the Boston taxi recollection naming the driver as the source.
Florynce Kennedyen.wikipedia.org

Her life (1916–2000), Columbia Law School, Abortion Rap with Diane Schulder — and a note that Steinem credited the taxi driver.
Wikiquote: Florynce Kennedyen.wikiquote.org

Lists the line as quoted in Ms. magazine, March 1973, and flags the competing Steinem attribution.
The Quote Verifier (2006) — Ralph Keyesarchive.org

The reference work Quote Investigator cites at page 62 as having also traced the saying to the cabdriver rather than to Kennedy or Steinem.

The woman it is credited to

About Florynce Kennedy

Florynce Kennedy

1916–2000 · American lawyer, feminist & civil rights activist

Florynce Rae Kennedy was an American lawyer, radical feminist and civil rights activist. Refused entry to Columbia Law School — she was told it was because she was a woman, not because she was Black — she threatened to sue, was admitted, and graduated in 1951 as the only Black student among eight women in her class. She represented the estates of Billie Holiday and Charlie Parker, co-wrote Abortion Rap with Diane Schulder, and in 1972 filed tax-evasion charges against the Catholic Church over its campaign against abortion rights. She summed up her own method as making white people nervous.

For writers & researchers

Cite this

The primary source (Chicago)

Hobbs, Chris. “bringing it home: if men could get pregnant, abortion would be a sacrament.” Off Our Backs: A Women’s News Journal 1, no. 23 (24 June 1971): 20. Earliest documented printing, reporting Florynce Kennedy’s speech at a rally of 15 May 1971.

This verification page

Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘If Men Could Get Pregnant, Abortion Would Be a Sacrament’?” Last verified 10 Oct 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/if-men-could-get-pregnant-abortion-would-be-a-sacrament/

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