#feministfriday | Shirley Chisholm

Shirley Chisholm was the first black woman elected to Congress (1968) and to run for President (1970). She was named honorary president of the National Association for the Repeal of Abortion Laws (NARAL) in 1969 and was a strong supporter of the legalization of abortion in her home state of New York in 1970. In her 1970 book Unbought and Unbossed, Chisholm argued that access to legal abortion was an issue of economic and racial justice, as poor African-American and Hispanic women were the most likely to be victims of unsafe “back alley” abortions while wealthy white women were much more likely to receive abortions from licensed doctors, even when the procedure was still illegal.

Sources:

Shirley Chisholm Wikipedia page

Linda Greenhouse, “What Would Shirley Do?” New York Times, 9 February 2011