1973 was one hell of a year for rock music. Debut LPs appeared from then-unknowns Bruce Springsteen, Aerosmith, and Queen, while more established acts gave us Raw Power, The Dark Side of the Moon, and Houses of the Holy. It was the year that a short-lived primordial punk trio called Neon Boys split up and reformed under the now-hallowed name of Television, the same year a ramshackle Bowery hole in the wall called CBGB & OMFUG first opened its doors. Beyond the world of rock, however, something hugely pivotal was also issued that year, which would affect both the public and private consciousnesses of the United States immeasurably (its women especially), and continues to do so today. It was a decision issued in January by the US Supreme Court declaring that a woman’s right to terminate a pregnancy was protected by her right to privacy, which is one of the fundamental rights implicitly granted and protected by the US Constitution. This was the decision reached in the case of Roe v. Wade.

It wasn’t that the justices had warm, fuzzy feelings about abortion, or even that a person ought, on principle, to have control over one’s own body. They approached it as more of a clarification of the legal definition of “privacy,” of where the power of government ends and where personal privacy begins, and it has remained such a hot-button argument that even today, most people’s views remain exactly that—private. This goes doubly for those whose meal tickets depend on their general popularity, i.e. artists and entertainers. Most artists wouldn’t touch the fierily polarizing subject with a 10-foot pole, and those that do seem to do it with a direct correlation between their striven-for level of popularity and the forthrightness of their stance.

There aren’t many recorded examples of abortion rights in songs prior to Roe v. Wade. The second wave of the women’s movement did have its cultural wing, however, and from there we got the Chicago Women’s Liberation Rock Band and its East Coast parallel, the New Haven Women’s Liberation Rock Band. Together these comprised the agitprop (or “agit-rock,” as their liner notes proclaimed) arm of the Chicago and the New Haven Women’s Liberation Unions, and though they were absolutely not known for any semblance of expert rock musicianship, they can safely stake a claim on being the first real all-woman feminist rock bands.

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