In accord with their human dignity, many individuals and groups see the need for Swazi women to participate in civic life alongside men. American women were not allowed to vote (a right sometimes called "suffrage") until 1920. A number of American women led the charge to give women the vote. What did these early champions of womens' rights have to say about abortion?
Susan B. Anthony, 1820-1906, and president of the National American Woman Suffrage Association and driving force of the women's suffrage movement-"Guilty? Yes. No matter what the motive, love of ease, or a desire to save from suffering the unborn innocent, the woman is awfully guilty who commits the deed. It will burden her conscience in life, it will burden her soul in death; But oh, thrice guilty is he who drove her to the desperation which impelled her to her crime!"-in Anthony's newspaper The Revolution
Elizabeth Cady Stanton, who worked with Susan B. Anthony for 50 years to get women the vote: regarding prostitution and the "murder of children either before or after birth": "For a quarter of a century sober, thinking women have warned this nation of these thick coming dangers, and pointed to the only remedy, the education and enfranchisement of woman...We believe the cause of all these abuses lies in the degradation of women." in The Revolution, 5 February 1868
Victoria Woodhull, first female presidential candidate, 1870: "The rights of children as individuals begin while they yet remain the foetus."
Last off from Susan B. Anthony: "All the articles on this subject that I have read have been from men. They denounce women as alone guilty, and never include man in any plans for the remedy." -July 8, 1869
May all of us-both men and women-stand with these forward-thinking women in their defense of both women and children. No to abortion; yes to love and life.
read more at www.feministsforlife.org/history/foremoth.htm
Rudy Poglitsh
rpoglitsh@live.com
more letters at http://letterstotheTOS.blogspot.com
