Pro-Life Feminism
The true feminist tradition values the unborn person's right to life
The following are a selection of quotes from our feminist foremothers, showing that respect for human beings in the womb is an integral part of a true respect for women's rights, and vice versa. All the early American feminists supported the unborn child's right to life, as does every truly pro-woman philosophy today.
More information can be found at www.FeministsForLife.org
Susan B. Anthony's publication, The Revolution, said of abortion:
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 the crime!
Elizabeth Cady Stanton
When we consider that women are treated as property, it is degrading to women that we should treat our children as property to be disposed of as we see fit. (Letter to Julia Ward Howe, October 16, 1873, recorded in Howe's diary at Harvard University Library)
Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell First woman to receive a medical degree from an American medical school:
The gross perversion and destruction of motherhood by the abortionist filled me with indignation, and awakened active antagonism. That the honorable term "female physician" should be exclusively applied to those women who carried on this shocking trade seemed to me a horror. It was an utter degradation of what might and should become a noble position for women. I finally determined to do what I could do to redeem the hells, and especially the one form of hell thus forced upon my notice. (From her diary)
Sarah F. Norton 19th C. suffragist, writer, public speaker
[C]hild murderers practice their profession without let or hinderance, and
open infant butcheries unquestioned, establishing themselves with an impunity
that is not allowed to the slaughterers of cattle…. Scores of persons advertise
their willingness to commit this form of murder, and with unblushing effrontery
announce their names and residences in the daily papers. No one seems to be
shocked by the fact…. [C]irculars are distributed broadcast, recommending
certain pills and potions for the very purpose, and by these means 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 all this ante-natal child murder? …Perhaps there will
come a time when… an unmarried mother will not be despised because of her
motherhood… and when the right of the unborn to be born will not be denied or
interfered with. (From the feminist newspaper Woodhull & Claflin's Weekly)
Eleanor Kirk (Eleanor "Nellie" Ames) Novelist & suffragist
"What will become of the babies?" Why doesn't somebody ask - what has become of the babies? Ask [abortionist Madame] Restelle and thousands of physicians, male and female, who have been engaged in their work of destruction for years. Physicians who have graduated from our first medical colleges, physicians with high sounding diplomas, whose elegant equipages stand in front of Fifth Avenue mansions, who pocket a big fee and a little bundle of flesh at the same time, and nobody's the wiser! not even the husband in hosts of instances. (From an article in The Revolution)
And in her novel Up Broadway, her character Mary tells the narrator:
Children are conceived, some of them legitimately, but children are troublesome comforts, and no fashionable woman wishes to be bothered with an increasing family! So Dr. So-and-so, who lives in close contiguity, and most sumptuously, is called. The result - an abortion; and the murderer pockets his big fee, and keeps on his work of destruction.
Dr. Charlotte Denman Lozier (1844-1870) Physician
Dr. Charlotte Lozier...was applied to last week by a man pretending to be from South Carolina, by name, [Andrew] Moran, as he also pretended, to procure an abortion on a very pretty young girl [identified as Caroline Fuller] apparently about eighteen years old. The Dr. assured him that he had come to the wrong place for any such shameful, revolting, unnatural and unlawful purpose. She proffered to the young woman any assistance in her power to render, at the proper time, and cautioned and counseled her against the fearful act which she and her attendant (whom she called her cousin) proposed. The man becoming quite abusive, instead of appreciating and accepting the counsel in the spirit in which it was proffered, Dr. Lozier caused his arrest under the laws of New York for his inhuman proposition. (From the article "Restellism Exposed" in The Revolution)
The editors of The Revolution continued:
May we not hope that the action of Mrs. Lozier in this case is an earnest of what may be the more general practice of physicians if called upon to commit this crime, when women have got a firmer foothold in the medical profession? Some bad women as well as bad men may possibly become doctors, who will do anything for money; but we are sure most women physicians will lend their influence and their aid to shield their sex from the foulest wrong committed against it. It will be a good thing for the community when more women like Mrs. Lozier belong to the profession.