Many in our culture have forgotten the Pro-Life roots of the feminist movement and unfortunately, numerous feminist groups, such as NOW, have made advocacy for abortion their priority—a goal that would have startled and disappointed the founders of the suffragist movement. Thankfully, groups such as the Feminists for Life (www.FFL.org) have preserved the true message of these founding women.
Authors Mary Kane Derr, Rachel MacNair, and Linda Naranjo-Heubl have also recently authored the book, Pro-Life Feminism: Yesterday and Today, an excellent anthology of articles that demonstrates that the protection of both women and their unborn children has been a priority for women suffragists since the mid-19th century. The book includes numerous essays from the founders of the feminist movement, women such as Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Elizabeth Blackwell. Their writings reveal that the right to vote and own property were not their only priorities; in fact, they spent significant time writing and lecturing on the atrocity of abortion and its degrading effects on women.
Following is a sampling of some of the wisdom and efforts of those founding mothers of the Pro-Life movement. (All quotes are excerpts from the anthology mentioned above.):
Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell, America’s first female physician, was rejected from over a dozen medical schools before being admitted to Geneva Medical College in 1845—and only then was accepted as a prank. Despite relentless harassment, she graduated at the top of her class and subsequently started the New York Infirmary for Women and Children. She boldly hired many female employees as well as Dr. Rebecca Cole (the nation’s second African American female physician). The Infirmary became a safe haven in New York City for single pregnant women—who were otherwise ostracized and left to die. She, too, challenged the medical community to understand that life began at fertilization.
In 1870, Sara Norton, a writer and traveling lecturer, wrote, “Any business self-supporting enough to become a recognized fact by the people must, of necessity, be on the increase; and the single fact that child murderers practice their profession without let or hindrance, and open infant butcheries unquestioned, establishing themselves with an impunity that is not allowed to the slaughterers of cattle, is of itself, sufficient to prove that society makes a demand which they alone can supply….the names of these slayers of infants and the methods by which they practice their life-destroying trade have become “familiar in our mouths as household words”….. Is there no remedy for this ante-natal child murder?
Elizabeth Cady Stanton, one of the three most prominent suffragist leaders, traveled and lectured on the rights of women and unborn children while raising seven youngsters of her own. In 1870 she emphasized, “We must educate our daughters that maternity is grand, and that God never cursed it, and the curse, if there be any, may be rolled off…..Let woman assert herself in all her native purity, dignity, and strength, and end this wholesale suffering and murder of helpless children. With centuries of degradation, we have so little of true womanhood that the world has but the faintest glimmering of what woman is or should be.”
Our hope and prayer is that Texas Right to Life will carry on this vision of Elizabeth Cady Stanton and of the numerous other Pro-Life heroines as we seek to restore true womanhood and build a Culture of Life.
