THE VFA PIONEER HISTORIES PROJECT
Nancy Stearns
“Women have a fundamental right to control their own bodies.”
Attorney, educator, lifelong advocate for civil and women’s rights and cabaret singer. Member of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). Center for Constitutional Rights. New York State Attorney General’s Environmental Protection Bureau. New York State Supreme Court Law Department.
Interviewed by Judy Waxman, Oral Historian, December 2022
Photo. Nancy Stearns speaks during a protest over New York’s abortion ban in the 1970s (She’s Beautiful When She’s Angry, by Mary Dore and Music Box Films)
More About Nancy:
- Nancy Stearns website
- National Lawyers Guild New York City Chapter, Honoring the 2018 Champions of Justice, Nancy Stearns by Franklin Siegel pages 11-15
- Nancy Stearns biography, The Charles Horman Truth Foundation website
- An Abortion Rights Champion of the 1970s on Life Before and After Roe, The New York Times, The Daily Podcast, July 1, 2022
- America Almost Took a Different Path Toward Abortion Rights, Roe v. Wade was never expected to be the case that made history, by Emily Bazelon, May 2022
- Nancy highlighted in the podcast Slow Burn: Roe v. Wade – The women who fought for legal abortion, the activists who pushed back, and the justices who thought they could solve the issue for good.
- Lawyers You’ll Like: Attorney Nancy Stearns podcast, May 2018
- Nancy Stearns ’67 is honored as Law Women’s Alumna of the Year, NYU Law, February 2019
- The Gainesville Eight, 40 years later, 2013
- Nancy’s remarks, Veteran Feminists of America Salute to Feminist Lawyers, Harvard Club, NYC June 2008
- Center for Constitutional Rights website
- Nancy Stearns on Spotify