{"id":5279,"date":"2006-10-14T11:17:46","date_gmt":"2006-10-14T11:17:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2006\/10\/susan-b-anthony-prolife-or-not.html"},"modified":"2006-10-14T11:17:46","modified_gmt":"2006-10-14T11:17:46","slug":"susan-b-anthony-prolife-or-not","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/10\/susan-b-anthony-prolife-or-not.html","title":{"rendered":"Susan B. Anthony – prolife or not?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Pro-Life feminists have consistently pointed to the opposition to abortion by 19th and early 20th century woman’s right advocates. A few months ago, a Feminists for Life member purchased Susan B. Anthony’s home<\/a> and has put it in the care of FFLA for care and management, something that greatly irritates the writer of yesterday’s NYTimes op-ed that tries to reclaim Anthony:<\/a><\/p>\n

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There is no question that she deplored the practice of abortion, as did every one of her colleagues in the suffrage movement. Feminists for Life cites an 1869 article in her newspaper denouncing \u201cchild murder,\u201d labeling abortion \u201ca most monstrous crime,\u201d and advocating its end. \u201cNo 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,\u201d blares the article. \u201cIt will burden her conscience in life, it will burden her soul in death.\u201d <\/p>\n

What is generally not mentioned is that the essay argues against an anti-abortion law; its author did not believe legislation would resolve the issue of unwanted pregnancy. Also not mentioned is the vaporous textual trail. According to the editors of Anthony\u2019s papers, the article is not hers. <\/p>\n

In her personal life Anthony was clear in her conviction that women were not preordained to motherhood, that sometimes a woman and her womb might go their separate ways. A devoted aunt, she claimed to appreciate her colleagues\u2019 offspring, some of whom even felt warmly toward her. But she had little patience for maternity. At best she was the ever-helpful friend who asks if you realize what you are in for just as you have vomited your way through your first trimester. At worst she was a ruthless scold. <\/p>\n

Elizabeth Cady Stanton\u2019s pregnancies were Anthony\u2019s despair: how was it possible, she wailed, \u201cthat for a moment\u2019s pleasure to herself or her husband, she should thus increase the load of cares under which she already groans\u201d? She was equally indulgent toward Antoinette Brown Blackwell, one of the movement\u2019s most gifted orators: \u201cNow, Nette, not another baby, is my peremptory command.\u201d Over and over she needled Stanton, galled that the suffragette dream team had \u201call given yourselves over to baby making and left poor brainless me to do battle alone.\u201d Stanton was the mother of six \u2014 one of whom weighed more than 12 pounds at delivery \u2014 when she received those cheering words.<\/p>\n

snip<\/em><\/p>\n

The bottom line is that we cannot possibly know what Anthony would make of today\u2019s debate. Unwanted pregnancy was for her bundled up with a different set of issues, of which only one truly mattered: rescuing women from \u201cthe Dead Sea of disfranchisement.\u201d In the 19th century, abortion often was life-threatening, contraception primitive, and a woman as little in control of her reproductive life as of her political one. The terms do not translate, one reason time travel is a risky proposition. No amount of parsing the founding fathers will reveal what they think of the war in Iraq, just as no modern chorus of mea culpas will explain away their slave-holding. To suggest otherwise is to wind up with history worthy of those classic commercial duos, Fred Astaire and his Dirt Devil, Paula Abdul and Groucho Marx<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Serrin Foster of FFLA responds:<\/p>\n

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In her Oct. 13 New York Times opinion piece, Stacy Schiff admitted that Susan B. Anthony opposed abortion and devoted herself to fighting for women\u2019s rights: \u201cThere is no question that she deplored the practice of abortion, as did every one of her colleagues in the suffrage movement.\u201d <\/p>\n

Schiff\u2019s summary of the early feminists\u2019 beliefs parallels my own statement: \u201cWithout known exception, the early American feminists condemned abortion in the strongest possible terms.\u201d<\/p>\n

Our feminist foremothers sought to consistently defend human beings through their efforts for suffrage and for abolition of slavery. The basic tenets of feminism, which we have received from the early feminists, are nondiscrimination, nonviolence, and justice for all. Abortion violates all three. <\/p>\n

The spirit of FFL\u2019s mission to create holistic solutions to the challenges faced by pregnant women and parents is perhaps best expressed in Anthony\u2019s own words: \u201cSweeter even than to have had the joy of caring for children of my own has it been to me to help bring about a better state of things for mothers generally, so their unborn little ones could not be willed away from them." (Susan B. Anthony, quoted in Frances Willard\u2019s Glimpses of Fifty Years: The Autobiography of an American Woman, Chicago: Women\u2019s Temperance Pub. Assoc., 1889, 598) <\/p>\n

As Mattie Brinkerhoff wrote in Anthony\u2019s newspaper: "When a man steals to satisfy hunger, we may safely conclude that there is something wrong in society\u2014so when a woman destroys the life of her unborn child, it is an evidence that either by education or circumstances she has been greatly wronged." (The Revolution, 4(9):138-9 September 2, 1869) <\/p>\n

Feminists for Life\u2019s goal is to eradicate the root causes that lead to abortion, because women deserve better. Schiff\u2019s portrayal of Anthony as a \u201ckilljoy\u201d and as \u201cthe drillmaster of the suffrage movement\u201d seems to be personality rather than philosophical analysis, irrelevant to Anthony\u2019s views. <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Commentary at Mere Comments.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Pro-Life feminists have consistently pointed to the opposition to abortion by 19th and early 20th century woman’s right advocates. A few months ago, a Feminists for Life member purchased Susan B. Anthony’s home and has put it in the care of FFLA for care and management, something that greatly irritates the writer of yesterday’s NYTimes…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":180,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5279","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nSusan B. 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The Catholicism comes from her side. Amy grew up in a number of places - Indiana - Washington, DC - Lubbock Texas - Arlington, Virginia - DeKalb, Illinois - Lawrence, Kansas - and Knoxville, Tennessee, where the family settled in 1973. She attended Knoxville Catholic High School, then the University of Tennessee where she majored in history. She received an MA in Church History from Vanderbilt University, where she wrote a thesis on the changing role of women in 19th century American Protestantism, and the ways Scripture was used to justify those changes. She worked as as a teacher in Catholic high schools and a Parish Director of Religious Education and started writing for the diocesan press - the Florida Catholic - in 1988. Amy has written columns for Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic News Service at times over the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in venues ranging from Our Sunday Visitor to the New York Times to Commonweal. She has written 17 books. 18, if you included the as yet tragically unpublished novel. Amy has five children, ranging in age from 26 to 4 and was married to Michael Dubruiel, who died unexpectedly in February 2009. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/author\/awelborn"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5279","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/180"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5279"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5279\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5279"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5279"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5279"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}