From its inception in 1972, Ms. has been at the forefront in tackling some of the biggest challenges in the fight for gender equality. In what The Washington Post says “changed the course of the abortion rights movement,” Ms. published “We Have Had Abortions” in its first issue, featuring the signatures of 53 prominent American women.

A year later, in its coverage of the landmark Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision that legalized abortion nationwide, the magazine included a shocking photo of a woman covered in blood on a motel room floor, dead from a back-alley abortion, as a memorial to the countless numbers who died or suffered because of illegal and unsafe abortions (“Never Again”).

Not all who signed the Ms. petition had had abortions, and there was a ground rule not to ask nor to reply to that question, says Barbaralee Diamonstein-Spielvogel, author of the original “We Have Had Abortions” article.

“Signers responded in the evocative and then-current spirit of JFK’s ‘Ich bin ein Berliner.’ [‘I am a Berliner,’ a 1963 speech in West Berlin to show solidarity with the city’s residents, who were isolated by the Berlin Wall.] Anything that impacts a woman—has resonance and touches on the rights of one woman—impacts each and all of us, with each of us understanding that there was and still is strength in a constituency, which we were hoping to ignite.”

In 2022, Ms. relaunched the petition in advance of the Supreme Court’s decision overturning women’s constitutional right to abortion, collecting thousands of names in just a few days.

Now, four years after the fall of Roe, we want to hear from you for The Majority, a new campaign collecting stories about how reproductive freedom has enabled readers to build the lives they want and need. Poll after poll shows a majority of Americans support reproductive healthcare access. Yet public debate overlooks the lives shaped by abortion access, contraception, IVF, miscarriage care, maternal healthcare or comprehensive sex education—countless women who chose to pursue an education, have children, not have children, protect their health and chart their own future. 

Add your voice and complete the sentence: “Access to reproductive choices gave me the freedom to….” Together, these stories will help show not only why reproductive freedom remains a majority value, but also what it makes possible. 

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We Have Had Abortions (Spring 1972)

These 53 American women invite you to join them in a campaign for honesty and freedom. 

Last year, 343 prominent and respected Frenchwomen were willing to sign a public mani festo declaring that they had undergone abortions. This acte de révolte dramatized their individual determination to take their lives and liberation into their own hands. It also showed their willingness to stand with and to speak for their less well-known sisters, who were forced to suffer unwanted pregnancies or illegal abortions in silence.

To many American women and men it seems absurd, in this allegedly enlightened age, that we should still be arguing for a simple principle: that a woman has the right to sovereignty over her own body. Still, there are tragically few places in the country where a woman can obtain an abortion without the expense and deception of conforming to inhuman laws, or the expense and physical danger of going outside the law. (Organizations offering information on the laws and on abortion availability are listed on page 126 of this issue.) The vast majority of abortion laws in this country are remnants of obscurantist attitudes and medieval prejudices.

In fact, at least one of every four women in the United States has had an abortion. Until the recent legal reform in two states, all of those had to be either therapeutic or illegal. Given the difficulty of securing a therapeutic abortion, the great majority of abortions endured by American women have been illegal–and therefore dangerous. This has caused untold suffering, especially on the part of poor women who must resort to self-induced or butchered abortions. Some idea of the lives to be saved by repealing abortion laws is suggested by the recent drastic reduction in deaths from childbirth, a statistic that includes deaths from bungled abortions, in New York City alone. During the first nine months of the new legal abortion program, “deaths from childbirth” dropped by at least 60 per cent.

To save lives and to spare other women the pain of socially-imposed guilt, 53 respected women residents in the United States have volunteered to begin the American Women’s Petition by signing the statement below. Our purpose is not to alienate or to ask for sympathy, but to repeal archaic and inhuman laws. Because of the social stigma still wrongly attached to abortion, many women in public life, or with husbands in public life, have felt unable to join us. We are mostly women active in community work, or in the arts. But we invite all women, from every walk of life, to help eliminate this stigma by joining us in this petition, and signing the statement below. The complete list will be sent to the White House, to every State Legislature, and to our sisters in other countries who are signing similar petitions for their lawmakers. 

The attitudes and laws against abortion in this country are causing untold suffering. Approximately one million American women have had “illegal” abortions in 1971–many of them self-induced or performed by the unqualified, some of them fatal. 

I have had an abortion. I publicly join millions of other American women in demanding a repeal of all laws that restrict our reproductive freedom. 

• Eve Auchincloss
• Sunny Aurelio
• Lorraine Beebe
• Joan Bingham
• Patricia Bosworth
• Kay Boyle
• Adelyn D. Breeskin
• Susan Brownmiller
• Hortense Calisher
• Jaqueline Michot Ceballos
• Lucinda Cisler
• Shirley Clarke
• Judy Collins
• Mary Cunningham
• Anselma Dell ‘Olio
• Karen De Crow
• Barbaralee D. Diamonstein
• Susan Edmiston
• Nora Ephron
• Lee Grant
• Gael Greene
• Nancy Grossman
• Barbara Barrie Harnick
• Lillian Hellman
• Dorothy Pitman Hughes
• Elizabeth Janeway
• Lucy Jarvis
• Jill Johnston
• Billie Jean King
• Maxine Kumin
• Irma Lazarus
• Viveca Lindfors
• Marya Mannes
• Dorothy Millstone
• Marcia Colman Morton
• Anaïs Nin
• Grace Paley
• Beverly Pepper
• Eleanor Perry
• Frances Fox Piven
• Letty Cottin Pogrebin
• Mary Rodgers
• Naomi Ellen Rubin
• Nora Sayre
• Anita Siegel
• Marcia B. Siegel
• Anne Sexton
• Ruth P. Smith
• Susan Sontag
• Gloria Steinem
• Lena Tabori
• Barbara W. Tuchman
• Shirley Ann Wheeler

To honor five-plus decades of feminist reporting, rebelling and truth-telling, From the Vault features some of our favorite classics from the pages of Ms. The complete Ms. Magazine Archive—every issue since 1972—is now available digitally on ProQuest: free to students, educators and activists via their libraries. Ask your local or campus librarian about subscriptions or free trial access. (More info here.) For an essential collection you can hold in your hands, don’t miss 50 YEARS OF Ms.: THE BEST OF THE PATHFINDING MAGAZINE THAT IGNITED A REVOLUTION (Alfred A. Knopf)—a stunning anthology of the most audacious, norm-breaking stories Ms. has published.