Gloria Steinem was 22 years old when she entered an underground clinic in London to terminate a pregnancy that could not continue.
She told no one. Not her family, nor her closest friends. That silence lasted nearly ten years, hidden beneath the routine of a young journalist who was beginning to make a name for herself in New York.
When she finally revealed it, she did not do so as a personal confession, but as a political weapon: that illegal abortion became the origin of her fight for reproductive freedom, the same fight that made her the face of the second wave of feminism in the United States.
She died on September 2, 2026, at the age of 92, in her New York home, surrounded by her loved ones. The statement posted on her Instagram gave no details about the cause.
She leaves behind nearly ten published books and one more on the way, ‘An Unexpected Life’, scheduled for late September. The secret she kept silent about for a decade ultimately became the explanation for everything she did afterward.