by Jordan Boyd

The world’s "most famous feminist" Gloria Steinem died at 92 years old on Wednesday, but the legacy the Ms. magazine co-founder leaves isn’t exactly the distinguished pro-woman one described by fawning corporate media outlets. Steinem’s legacy is both defined and ruled by the idea that abortion is what gives a woman her worth.

Steinem has always been and will continued to be honored by all the wrong people for all the wrong reasons. The Atlantic was among the worst this week when it dubbed Steinem’s work "feminism for all" despite the writer’s decades-long history of snubbing men (The Patriarchy™), marriage ("You become a semi-non person when you get married"), motherhood, household labor and any women who refused to fall into line with her shade of feminism.

Yes, the former undercover Playboy Bunny and CIA collaborator once lamented the "patriarchal, nuclear family" as an invention of "industrialization and capitalism" and purported solidarity for her sex unless it was politically inconvenient. Steinem also played an early role in feminists’ blurring sex differences by calling research on the subject "the remnant of anti-American crazy thinking" and repeatedly insisted "we badly need to raise our boys more like our girls."

But the one essential issue that never left her list of passions was abortion. That is exactly why she was immediately celebrated as a "hero" and "crusader for abortion rights" who popularized euphemisms such as "reproductive freedom" to describe the violent dismemberment and chemical starvation of babies in the womb.

The tongue bath is unsurprising given Steinem co-founded and was on the board of Choice USA, now Unite for Reproductive & Gender Equity (URGE), which "envisions a liberated world where we can live with justice, love freely, express our gender and sexuality, and define and create families of our choosing." She also dedicated much of her life to lobbying and raising millions of dollars for abortion.

"It took us a while to figure out but patriarchy – or whatever you want to call it, the systems that say there’s masculine and feminine and other bullsh-t – is about controlling reproduction. Every economics course ought to start not with production but with reproduction. It is way more important," Steinem remarked more than a decade before her death.

If Steinem made one thing clear over her 92 years, it’s that she loved abortion, even when it called into question her championing of women as men’s equals.

"Women are always saying, ‘We can do anything that men can do,’ but men should be saying, ‘We can do anything that women can do.’" Steinem remarked at the 1977 National Women’s Conference.

Women can do anything and more, Steinem and co. proclaim! Anything, that is, unless they get pregnant. According to the ideology of abortion zealots like Steinem, women can’t do it all if carrying a baby to term is required. They believe pregnancy and raising children is an obstacle to happiness and success.

"If men could get pregnant, abortion would be a sacrament," Steinem once remarked.

Men can’t get pregnant. Yet, women like Steinem have still worked hard to turn abortion into a sacrament. In one interview, Steinhem went so far as to claim more abortions would have prevented what she dubbed the world’s current "climate problems."

Ending life in the womb, she and her cohort proclaim, is not only necessary but it’s also empowering. Killing the unborn is a pillar in their propaganda that preaches prioritizing reckless sex, shattering glass ceilings, and girl-bossing over marriage, family, and fertility, despite the indisputable benefits of the latter.

Steinem personally hailed her illegal abortion at 22 years old as "the first time I had taken responsibility for my own life" and even dedicated her 2015 book My Life on the Road to her London abortionist.

"I wasn’t going to let things happen to me. I was going to direct my life, and therefore it felt positive," Steinem recalled in 2011.

Just like that, Steinem’s life was completely characterized by her decision to defy motherhood using abortion.

Steinem famously blamed society for encouraging "women to be victims in every way."

"It’s not okay for a woman to be in control of her own body, her own reproductive system, much less of her life. There’s opposition even to that. So passivity is rewarded as feminine," Steinem suggested.

What she failed to mention is the feminism she sold to women preached no differently.

Not only is killing your unborn baby is the opposite of taking responsibility for your choices, but it’s far from the euphoric and liberating act Steinem and so many other leftist women pretend it is. Abortion is proven to physically, emotionally, and mentally wreck women. In fact, the only parties abortion seems to readily empower are sex traffickers and abusers, oftentimes men, whose exploitation of victims hinges on an industry that is willing to murder babies and hurt women with little to no questions asked.

If Steinem made anything clear over the last 50 years of her career, it’s that she loved abortion more she loved women. Because to love and support women is to understand and value their unique role in procreation, not treat that ability as an inconvenience that must be sidelined in favor of seemingly larger, more important plans.

Demanding that women should be able to kill their own children to pursue their careers or live their lives well is not empowering. It’s reductionist, insulting, and downright anti-woman. Most of all, it’s sad.