The Nine Founding Feminists

The Nine Founding Feminists

Susan B. Anthony: "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."

Anthony's newspaper, The Revolution: "When a woman destroys the life of her unborn child, it is a sign that, by education or circumstances, she has been greatly wronged." She recognized the need to "eradicate the most monstrous crime" of abortion from society.

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." She called abortion a "disgusting and degrading crime."

Alice Paul (the author of the original Equal Rights Amendment, 1923): "Abortion is the ultimate exploitation of women."

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."

Victoria Woodhull (America's first female presidential candidate): "Every woman knows that if she were free, she would ... never think of murdering a child before its birth."

Sarah Norton: "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."

Mary Wollstonecraft (author of the feminist movement with the book, A Vindication of the Rights of Women), decried those who would "either destroy the embryo in the womb, or cast it off when born."

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."

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."