The debut independent issue of Ms. magazine sells out its roughly 300,000 print run within days.
On July 1, 1972, the first stand-alone issue of Ms. magazine reached newsstands across the United States. Although a preview insert had appeared within New York magazine the previous December, this was the first issue published as a fully independent magazine.
The issue sold out its initial print run of approximately 300,000 copies within days, an unprecedented commercial validation for a magazine devoted explicitly to feminist politics and issues. Publishers and advertisers had been skeptical that a magazine centering women's rights, reproductive freedom, and gender equality could find a mass audience; the rapid sellout dramatically proved otherwise.
Gloria Steinem, as one of the magazine's most prominent founders and editors, became closely identified with its content and mission. The issue included the famous petition in which fifty-three prominent American women publicly declared they had undergone illegal abortions, a bold act of civil disobedience meant to galvanize the campaign for legal abortion rights before Roe v. Wade.
The success of this first issue cemented Ms. as a lasting institution in American journalism and feminist history, and it remains published today, continuing the mission Steinem and her co-founders established in 1972.