At 88, Gloria Steinem has long been the nations most visible feminist and advocate for womens rights. But at 22, she was a frightened American in London getting an illegal abortion of a pregnancy so unwanted, she actually tried to throw herself down the stairs to end it.

Her response to the Supreme Courts decision overruling Roe v. Wade is succinct: Obviously, she wrote in an email message, without the right of women and men to make decisions about our own bodies, there is no democracy.

Steinems blunt remark cuts to the heart of the despair some opponents are feeling about Fridays historic rollback of the 1973 case legalizing abortion. If a right so central to the overall fight for womens equality can be revoked, they ask, what does it mean for the progress women have made in public life in the intervening 50 years?

One of the things that I keep hearing from women is, My daughters going to have fewer rights than I did. And how can that be? says Debbie Walsh, of the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University. If this goes, what else can go? It makes everything feel precarious.