Pro-Life & Feminist ARE NOT Mutually Exclusive

There is a dirty little secret that the radical feminists who have hijacked the women's rights movement don't want us to know, early feminists, like Susan B. Anthony, were overwhelmingly pro-life. Yup, pro-life, not pro-abortion. (more at the end of the article)

PRO-LIFE GROUPS HONOR SUSAN B. ANTHONY'S BIRTHDAY, POINT TO ABORTION OPPOSITION

by Steven Ertelt
LifeNews.com Editor

Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) -- Susan B. Anthony is often considered one of the earliest leaders for women's rights but, as Americans remember her today on her birthday, pro-life groups point out that she was vehemently pro-life. Though modern-day women's groups promote abortion, Anthony would not have joined them.
America’s most well-known women’s rights leader was born 190 years ago today, on February 15, 1820.
The president of the Susan B. Anthony List, a national organization named for the pro-life suffragette, reflected on Anthony’s largely unknown pro-life legacy.
“If Susan B. Anthony were alive today, she would be overjoyed by the strength of the growing American pro-life majority,” said Marjorie Dannenfelser, the head of the group that helps elect pro-life women to office.
“While many are familiar with Anthony’s efforts to earn women the right to vote, few realize she vehemently opposed abortion. Anthony recognized that authentic women’s rights could never be built upon the broken rights of innocent unborn children," she told LifeNews.com today.
Dannenfelser says American women are coming to the realization that abortion doesn't represent them -- a concept Anthony readily understood two centuries ago.
“Susan B. Anthony’s brand of original, authentic pro-life feminism resonates with today’s American woman,” said Dannenfelser.
“And it’s why the old guard of abortion-promoting feminists struggles to remain relevant. In our increasingly pro-life culture, the ‘pro-choice’ label has worn out its usefulness. The modern feminist mantra calling for a taxpayer-funded abortion in every home flies in the face of Susan B. Anthony’s legacy of equal rights for all, even the unborn," she explained.
Sally Winn, executive director of the museum at Anthony's birthplace home in Adams, Massachusetts, confirms Anthony's pro-life heritage.
"We have one section that is on Susan B. Anthony’s opposition to Restellism -- which was a term for abortions in that era," she told the Bennington Banner newspaper.
The museum has more than 80 issues of Anthony's newspaper, The Revolution, which makes more than 100 references to abortion and Winn said each of the references is in direct opposition to abortion. She also points out that the newspaper did not accept advertising for abortion.
Anthony referred to abortion as “the horrible crime of child-murder,” and said that abortion would “burden [a woman’s] conscience in life, [and] it will burden her soul in death.”
"I think people would be hard-pressed to find any evidence to the contrary," Winn said about Anthony's opposition to abortion.
Serrin Foster, the president of Feminists for Life of America, which continues in the pro-life, pro-woman mindset of Anthony, also confirms the women's rights leader was pro-life.
"There’s no real debate about where Anthony stood on abortion," Foster says.
Dannenfelser says women today, like Anthony, appear to understand that abortion is bad for women.
She points to an October 2009 poll conducted by the Polling Company and WomenTrend that found two-thirds of women objected to government-funded abortions in a healthcare bill, including majorities of women of all ages, races, regions, marital and parental statuses, and political parties.
Of these women, 55% self-identified as Democrats, 66% as Independents, and 84% as Republicans. Even the minority of 39% of women who identified as “pro-choice” opposed abortion funding.
This data supports the Gallup poll from May 2009 that found a majority of Americans (51%) labeled themselves as “pro-life.” The Gallup poll also found that more women, 49% over 44%, call themselves “pro-life” over “pro-choice.”
Related web sites:

Susan B. Anthony List - http://www.sba-list.org/

Feminists for Life of America - http://www.feministsforlife.org/

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Meanwhile the Pro-abort radical feminists have got their shorts bunched up in knots about the truth that Susan B. Anthony would NOT approve of their agenda, to kill as many unborn children as possible. Look at this photo of a car parked near the newly opened Susan B. Anthony Birthplace & Museum. They don't like the fact that "Anthony, "believed, as did many of the feminists of her era, that only the achievement of women's equality and freedom would end the need for abortion. Anthony used her anti-abortion writings as yet another argument for women's rights." ( About.com )

Carol Crossed of Feminists Choosing Life of NY purchased the property in 2006. "The private home was painstakingly restored to as close to its original condition as possible on the first floor (offices and a caretaker's apartment is upstairs), with great attention to paint, windows, flooring and the replication of the kitchen hearth and the small store her father, Daniel Anthony, ran in the front room." (from the museum website)

Gloria Feldt, who formerly served as head of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America makes the following claim: "There's absolutely nothing in anything that she ever said or did that would indicate she was anti-abortion." (Susan B. Anthony's Abortion Position Spurs Scuffle)

She intentionally denies the fact that in her publication The Revolution, Anthony wrote the following about 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!" Sounds pretty anti-abortion to me.

In the 8 July 1869 issue of The Revolution [4(1):4] she referred to abortion as "child murder." In the same issue she also wrote "We want prevention, not merely punishment. We must reach the root of the evil...It is practiced by those whose inmost souls revolt from the dreadful deed." Prevention, calling it evil & a dreadful deed, again that sure sounds like Anthony opposed abortion.

After denying that Anthony ever said anything against abortion Feldt adds "Comparisons between contemporary and 19th century debates over abortion are meaningless because of the different cultural contexts." Now why would Feldt need to add that if there was nothing there in the 1st place? She knows there is & she is trying to spin things to make excuses for Anthony's stand. But it isn't just Anthony who was spoke on abortion. The fact is many early feminists spoke out making it clear how they felt about abortion & it wasn't in favor of it. Feminists for Life have a page of quotes that undermine any of Feldt's arguements about context. (Interestingly enough 1 of those quotes is from anarchist Emma Goldman who has an abortion clinic named after her in Iowa City. I think I am safe in saying she would not approve of that fact.)

So, the radical feminists better face the facts, it isn't the Pro-lifers that hijacks Susan B. Anthony, it is the pro-aborts under the guise of pro-choice who have done so. But the turth is out there. & it won't go away. Susan B. Anthony & true feminism are antithetical to abortion.

Photo source: Jill Stanek (Susan B. Anthony museum opens today amidst abortion controversy)