Abortion Action Week, May 1-6, 1972: the Women's National Abortion Action Coalition poster
The Women's National Abortion Action Coalition's 1972 Abortion Action Week poster: three legal demands and the banner "WOMEN UNITE: ABORTION IS OUR RIGHT
Techniques named on the archive record
Glittering generalities
Date
1972
Made by
Women's National Abortion Action Coalition
Medium
Poster
Country
United States
Regime
Nixon Administration
Source
Identified Openly sourced: the speaker is who they say they are
Source
Library of Congress , retrieved September 27, 2026
Source
Public domain (published 1972 without copyright notice; LoC rights statement: No known restrictions on publication) Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C. 20540 USA http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/pp.print
Object, image, and catalog record from the FRAME archive. Text on this page is CC BY 4.0. Image rights are as the archive records.
A 1972 poster by the Women's National Abortion Action Coalition calls a week of protest for 1 to 6 May. It prints three legal demands over a photograph of marchers whose main banner reads "WOMEN UNITE: ABORTION IS OUR RIGHT !!" and signs off with the coalition's New York address and telephone number.
The sheet
The archive describes this as a poster for a week of protests before Roe v. Wade. It gives the event and its dates, then a headline that sets out what the organizers wanted from the law, and under it a photograph of marchers with hand-lettered banners and placards. Several of those overlap or are angled away from the camera; the large main banner is the one that reads clearly. The coalition's name, address and telephone number close the sheet.
Abortion Action Week
May 1-6, 1972
Repeal all abortion laws and restrictive contraception laws and end forced sterilization!
[banners carried by marchers, partly overlapping and illegible:]
[...]
OUR DECISION!!
[...]
WOMEN UNITE: ABORTION IS OUR RIGHT !!
WOMEN'S NATIONAL ABORTION ACTION COALITION
For More Information: WOMEN'S NATIONAL ABORTION ACTION COALITION, 150 FIFTH AVENUE, SUITE 315, NEW YORK, N.Y. 10011, 212-675-9150
Demands and a right
The poster speaks in two registers. The headline is specific. It asks for three things a legislature could act on: repeal of abortion laws, repeal of restrictive contraception laws, and an end to forced sterilization. The banner is general. "ABORTION IS OUR RIGHT" states the movement's conclusion as a right, which the archive calls the key word of its framing. The archive's single technique tag is glittering generalities, and the banner is where the general word sits.
The third demand is worth reading on its own. Forced sterilization is a charge against the state's power over the body, set on the same line as the call to repeal abortion law. It is a claim about consent. The poster gives no cases or numbers for it.
Who signed it
The coalition put its name on the poster twice and printed a street address and a telephone number. The archive's source tag is "Identified," openly sourced, and its purpose field reads "Mobilize or secure compliance." This was a movement calling its own people out to march, under its own name.
FRAME object record, Abortion Action Week, May 1-6, 1972. Women's National Abortion Action Coalition.
Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, catalog record, retrieved by the archive 27 September 2026. Rights as recorded: public domain (published 1972 without copyright notice); LOC: No known restrictions on publication.
