"If men could get pregnant, abortion would be a…

“If men could get pregnant, abortion would be a sacrament” is a popular statement in support of abortion. Activists Florynce Kennedy and Gloria Steinem were in a taxicab (Steinem recalls it was either in Boston or Cambridge), when the elderly female Irsh cabdriver overheard their conversation and said, “Honey, if men could get pregnant, abortion would be a sacrament.”

The saying has been cited in print since at least 1971 and has usually been attributed to Florynce Kennedy (1916-2000).

Wikipedia: Florynce Kennedy
Florynce Kennedy (February 11, 1916 – December 22, 2000), was a U.S. lawyer, activist, civil rights advocate, and feminist.
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She is known for her pro-choice activism on abortion, writing a book called Abortion Rap, and stating that “If men could get pregnant, abortion would be a sacrament.”

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Newsweek
Volume 78
1971
Pg. 94:
Gloria Steinem’s statement: “If men could get pregnant, abortion would be a sacrament” contains much poignant truth.

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Aphra
Volume 3
1972
Pg. 49:
If men could get pregnant, abortion would be a sacrament. —woman cabdriver to Florynce Kennedy and Diane Schulder, 1971

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Five for Freedom;
A study of feminism in fiction
By Geoffrey Atheling Wagner
London, Allen & Unwin
1972
Pg. 34:
“If men could get pregnant, abortion would be a sacrament” (Gloria Steinem).

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Mothers and Daughters of Invention:
Notes for a revised history of technology
By Autumn Stanley
New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press
1995
Pg. 208:
If men could get pregnant, abortion would be a sacrament. — NYC woman cab driver; attrib. to Florynce Kennedy, 1970s

Boston (MA) Globe
Hanging With Gloria Steinem
By Stephanie Schorow, Globe Correspondent | November 24, 2006
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Steinem brightens. “You know who said that? 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.’ And I’ve always been so sorry that I didn’t get her name.”

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The Quote Verifier:
Who Said What, Where, and When
By Ralph Keyes
New York, NY: St. Martin’s Press
2006
Pg. 62:
A 1973 Ms. magazine profile of activist lawyer Florynce Kennedy (1916-2000) by Gloria Steinem included a compendium of Kennedy’s salty observations. One was “If men could get pregnant, abortion would be a sacrament.” Since then, this feminist truism has generally been attributed to Kennedy. However, a decade after making this attribution, Steinem admitted that the quip’s real author was an Irish cabdriver, an elderly woman, who—while ferrying her and Kennedy around Boston in the early 1970s—said, “Honey, if men could get pregnant, abortion would be a sacrament.”

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Ifferisms: An Anthology of Aphorisms That Begin with the Word “IF”
By Mardy Grothe
New York, NY: HarperCollins Publishers
2009
Pg. 139:
If men could get pregnant, abortion would be a sacrament.
FLORYNCE KENNEDY
While this quotation is almost always attributed to Kennedy, a colorful and outspoken attorney in the early years of the feminist movement, she said she heard it from an elderly female cabdriver in Boston in the 1960s.