Joyce Antler on Irene Peslikis

“The cultural-political perspectives of Jewish feminists interacted with the ideas of many other pioneering women's liberationists in the city, Jewish and non-Jewish, including Kathie Sarachild, Carol Hanisch, Irene Peslikis, Peggy Dobbins, Anne Koedt, Pat Mainardi, Robin Morgan, Ann Snitow, and Vivian Gornick. Acting within a communal context, innovative theory and practice emerged from group interaction.”

“Redstockings staged a public hearing at Judson Memorial Church in Greenwich Village, where a dozen women told a crowd of several hundred about their own abortions. The effect was electric, sending shock waves through the community and the nation and helping to lead a groundswell of action against illegal abortion, one that culminated a few years later in Roe v. Wade. This first speak-out, organized by Shulamith Firestone, Irene Peslikis, and others, inspired similar events elsewhere, including in France, where a number of prominent women, including Simone de Beauvoir (Ellen Willis's heroine as well as Firestone's), risked imprisonment by publicly declaring, "I have had an abortion."”