Was Susan B. Anthony pro-life?
That’s the question taken up on the op/ed page of today’s New York Times. Stacy Schiff points to the purchase of the estate of the early pioneer of American feminism by the pro-life group Feminists for Life. She then questions whether Anthony really fits the model of a pro-life feminst. It is questionable, she argues, whether Anthony actually wrote the essay against “child murder” quoted by pro-life groups, and these groups, she concludes, never mention that the same essay opposes legislative measures against abortion.
Schiff further contends that Anthony’s attitude was hardly pro-natalist. She writes:
“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’ 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.”
I wonder how useful this debate is for either side of the abortion debate. Would Anthony’s feminism have trumped her concern for the harm abortion does to women, were she living in the contemporary American context? Who knows. Perhaps though the conversation is worthwhile. Schiff, after all, at least recognizes the link between abortion and babies, a truth often lost in the sloganizing over “choice” and “who decides.”
