To label family planning and legal abortion programs "genocide" is male rhetoric, for male ears.

That I am a national figure because I was the first person in 192 years to be at once a congressman, black, and a woman proves, I would think, that our society is not yet either just or free.

Tremendous amounts of talent are lost to our society just because that talent wears a skirt.

Be as bold as the first man or [woman] to eat an oyster.

Congress seems drugged and inert most of the time... its idea of meeting a problem is to hold hearings or, in extreme cases, to appoint a commission.

Which is more like genocide, I have asked some of my black brothers - this, the way things are, or the conditions I am fighting for in which the full range of family planning services is available to women of all classes and colors, starting with effective contraception and extending to safe, legal terminations of undesired pregnancies at a price they can afford?

Of my two `handicaps,' being female put more obstacles in my path than being black.