Abortion is a woman’s issue? Abortion empowers women? Abortion makes women free, no longer a piece of property?

That’s a bunch of crap! History has a way of repeating its self…better take a history lesson. The founding feminists, the ones who fought for our right to vote and to own property where actually very anti-abortion as well. And fought to make abortion illegal. They claimed abortion was a man’s was of exploiting a woman, and that abortion was a disgrace because it treated their offspring like property.

And low and behold, 100 years later, those dirty deviled men are at it again… pressuring and forcing women all across the USA to abort their kids so they don’t have to provide for them and their mothers. Ever heard of Tom Likus’s “Hail Mary Approach” ? Happens all the time. Men exploits women through abortion.

Susan B. Anthony

In her publication The Revolution, she wrote:

“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!”
Abortion was referred to as “child murder.”
The Revolution, 4(1):4 July 8, 1869

Elizabeth Cady Stanton wrote:

The Revolution, 1(5):1, February 5, 1868

“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.”

Emma Goldman

“The custom of procuring abortions has reached such appalling proportions in America as to be beyond belief…So great is the misery of the working classes that seventeen abortions are committed in every one hundred pregnancies.”
Mother Earth, 1911

Mattie Brinkerhoff

“When a man steals to satisfy hunger, we may safely conclude that there is something wrong in society – so 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

Victoria Woodhull

The first female presidential candidate was a strong opponent of abortion.

“The rights of children as individuals begin while yet they remain the foetus.”
Woodhull’s and Claflin’s Weekly 2(6):4 December 24, 1870

“Every woman knows that if she were free, she would never bear an unwished-for child, nor think of murdering one before its birth.”
Wheeling, West Virginia Evening Standard, November 17, 1875

Sarah Norton

“Child murderers practice their profession without let or hindrance, and open infant butcheries unquestioned…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.”

Woodhull’s and Claffin’s Weekly, November 19, 1870

Mary Wollstonecraft

As early as 1792, Mary Wollstonecraft wrote “A Vindication of the Rights of Women,” which Susan B. Anthony admired enough to serialize in The Revolution. After decrying, in scathing 18th century terms, the sexual exploitation of women, she said:

“Women becoming, consequently, weaker…than they ought to be…have not sufficient strength to discharge the first duty of a mother; and sacrificing to lasciviousness the parental affection…either destroy the embryo in the womb, or cast if off when born. Nature in every thing demands respect, and those who violate her laws seldom violate them with impunity.”

Matilda Gage

“[This] subject lies deeper down in woman’s wrongs than any other…I hesitate not to assert that most of [the responsibility for] this crime lies at the door of the male sex.”
The Revolution, 1(14):215-6 April 9, 1868

Alice Paul

The author of the original Equal Rights Amendment (1923) opposed the later trend of linking the E.R.A. with abortion. A colleague recalls her saying:

“Abortion is the ultimate exploitation of women.”

This is a beautiful blog. I look forward to reading it daily through my RSS reader. Women are the greatest untapped resource on the planet. I studied women’s issues at a Major university and am dumbfounded that most countries treat their women like second class citizens, property with no more rights then the donkeys they don’t get to ride. I could go on forever, I would like to post if that is possible.

Societies must legislate equality for half their population their women. I love how it was stated in one of these posts. Women are everything to their significant others, from caregivers, to providers, to the wellspring of new life. We should cherish them as the equivalent pertners in life that they are. If not more.

So few well done blogs. This one is perfect.

Bill

Sharon