Quotes from Early Feminists Leaders
Alice Paul (author of the original ERA) - "Abortion is the ultimate exploitation of women."
Elizabeth Cady Stanton (early suffragist leader) - "When we consider that women have been treated as property it is degrading to women that we should treat our children as property to be disposed of as we see fit."
Simone de Beauvoir (prominent feminist author) - "The woman who has recourse to abortion disowns feminist values..."
Despite the large monetary loss involved, The Revolution, the suffragist paper put out by Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, refused to run ads for abortifacients. Victoria Woodhull and Tennessee Clafin, the free-love advocates, held the same policy in their weekly newspaper. They also ran ads exposing lucrative, male-run abortion practices in New York City.
Susan B. Anthony referred to abortion as "child-murder" and Elizabeth Cady Stanton classed it with the killing of a newborn under the single term "infanticide." Woodhull and Clafin's weekly asserted that "the rights of children as individuals begin while yet they remain the foetus."
As Elizabeth Cady Stanton phrased it, the practice of abortion was one more result of the "degradation of women." Feminists then looked forward to abortion's elimination rather than its adoption.
Ezra Haywood, an outspoken sexual radical in the 1880's, wrote that "this murderous practice is unworthy of Free Lovers." Eliza Duffy characterized abortion as "murder."
Adrienne Rich: "Abortion is violence: a deep desperate violence inflicted upon women..."
Germaine Greer: "It is typical of the contradictions that break women's hearts that when they avail themselves of their fragile right to abortion, they often, even usually, went with grief and humiliation to carry out a painful duty that was presented to them as a privilege. Abortion is the latest in a long-line of non-choices..."
Victoria Woodhull said in 1875: "Every woman knows that if she were truly free, she would never think of murdering a child before its birth."
Elizabeth Cady Stanton declared in 1868 that the remedy for the "crying evil" of abortion was "the complete enfranchisement and elevation of women."
Abortion and Breast Cancer
The Journal of the National Cancer Institute released a study "Risk of Breast Cancer Among Young Women: Relationship to Induced Abortion" by Janet Darling, et al. The study indicates that women who had an abortion in their first trimester, before experiencing a full term pregnancy, may be at increased risk for breast cancer. In some cases, that risk is 100 percent more than among the general population.
Feminists for Life noted a year ago that some 20 studies from the past 10 years indicate a strongly possible link between abortion and breast cancer. Why do abortion supporters, who claim to support women, ignore this information_
Patriarchy and Abortion
Sex selection: Abortion supports patriarchy because of sex-selection abortions. Abortion allows women (or forceful men) to choose to abort children on the basis of sex (i.e. unwanted females). Thus is then comes as no shock that in India out of 8,000 abortions, 7,999 were female.
Pressure: In a recent survey, mothers cited 47% of the time that the reason they had their abortion was because of pressure or threats from a boyfriend/husband. Abortion allows the continued relegation of women to lower status.
Abortionists: Abortion promotes patriarchy as its legal status was handed down by nine old men, abortion facilities are owned and operated primarily by men, abortionists are primarily men, and the people making millions of dollars from abortion each and every year - by exploiting women - are men.
Men are Better: The old argument used to be that men are better than women becausewomen are biologically inferior. Abortion promotes that view by treating pregnancy as a problem rather than as a special gift that only women can provide.
As long as patriarchy is free to reign, a woman's "right" to abortion will be a pitiful surrogate for freedom from the sexual and economic exploitation that compels this "oppressive" choice.
Pro-Woman
The pro-life stances acknowledges that a woman's fertility, her child-rearing, as one of the many gifts that women bring to society.
How can we claim to advance the cause of women - that they are truly capable of performing as well as men in society and that women can handle problems rationally and with common sense - and then assert that should abortion be declared illegal, they would resort to coat-hangers in a back alley. That's hypocrisy!
Women say prolife men should have no say about abortion, because abortion is a "woman's issue." Fine, keep pro-abortion men out of the debate as well.
Just think how terrible it would be if abortion weren't legal and men had