Talk About A War on Women

"Men Launched the Movement to Legalize Abortion"
by Rosemary Oelrich Bottcher, past president of Feminists for Life

The first edition of Betty Friedan’s seminal book, The Feminine Mystique, did not even mention abortion. Legalizing abortion was not on the newborn NOW’s list of issues. In his 1979 book Aborting America, Dr. Nathanson recalled [Larry] Lader [a “disciple” of Margaret Sanger] saying, “If we’re going to move abortion out of the books and into the streets, we’re going to have to recruit the feminists. Friedan has got to put her troops into this thing — while she still has control of them.”

When I met [Dr. Bernard] Nathanson [the one-time abortion advocate] at the National Right to Life convention in June of 1986, he told me that they convinced the leaders of NOW that easy access to legal abortion was essential to ameliorating the problems that were thwarting the well-being of women, the problems that Friedan had identified in her book. “We got them to see legal abortion as a civil rights issue, a basic women’s rights issue,” Nathanson explained. In Nathanson’s earlier words, “Lader’s marriage with the feminists was a brilliant tactic.” Abortion has been NOW’s cardinal cause ever since.

Also recounted in the Brian E. Fisher book, Abortion: The Ultimate Exploitation of Women.

So. It wasn't the original feminists who "did this" for women.

It was predominantly powerful, white, old, men. One of whom was an abortionist, who made a lot of money doing abortions. Another of whom was a Margaret Sanger eugenicist follower.