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Friday, January 29 is the annual “March for Life.” Given the loss of, well, life since last year it’s virtual this time. And not suffrage-themed. But the anti-abortion movement continues to take suffragists’ names in vain.
Was Susan B Anthony really against abortion? Read on...
Was Susan B Anthony really against abortion? Read on...
The idea that Anthony or Elizabeth Cady Stanton or Alice Paul wanted the government to decide whether you get pregnant and stay pregnant is absurd.
The claims of anti-abortion groups like @SBAList @AlicePaulGroup & Stanton International rest on 3 scraps, all falsehoods:
The claims of anti-abortion groups like @SBAList @AlicePaulGroup & Stanton International rest on 3 scraps, all falsehoods:
1) An 1869 article published in Stanton & Anthony’s newspaper The Revolution, falsely attributed to Anthony. The article denounced “child murder” and labeled abortion “a most monstrous crime.” Anthony edited the paper but didn’t write the piece. She said the opposite, repeatedly.
2) An alleged letter from ElizCadyStanton to Julia Ward Howe 
saying it was “degrading to women” to view children as “property to be disposed of as we see fit.”
There’s no source for the letter, and it is dated a day that Stanton & Howe were actually together at a conference.
saying it was “degrading to women” to view children as “property to be disposed of as we see fit.” There’s no source for the letter, and it is dated a day that Stanton & Howe were actually together at a conference.
3) References by Alice Paul to the harm of back alley abortions, twisted to suggest she opposed it.
Paul so fiercely believed women should make their own choices about their bodies that she opposed women’s maximum hour laws—meant to protect factory workers—as paternalistic.
Paul so fiercely believed women should make their own choices about their bodies that she opposed women’s maximum hour laws—meant to protect factory workers—as paternalistic.
That’s it—that’s the “evidence” of suffragists’ supposed opposition to abortion.
In 70+ years of speeches & letters—a corpus so massive the edited highlights run 7,000 pages—anti-choice folks offer three threadbare references to alleged anti-abortion feeling.
And they’re fake.
In 70+ years of speeches & letters—a corpus so massive the edited highlights run 7,000 pages—anti-choice folks offer three threadbare references to alleged anti-abortion feeling.
And they’re fake.
That’s pathetic. But what’s really gross is the misappropriation and willful misunderstanding of the entire century of struggle.
Women’s political organizing began in the 1830s, when a tiny number of Black and white women began publicly objecting to the way U.S. society worked.
Women’s political organizing began in the 1830s, when a tiny number of Black and white women began publicly objecting to the way U.S. society worked.
Objecting to enslavement.
To the fact that women who were not enslaved were legally erased when they married.
That everything women owned or made or did—including their children—was their husband’s property.
That rape by a husband was not a crime.
To the fact that women who were not enslaved were legally erased when they married.
That everything women owned or made or did—including their children—was their husband’s property.
That rape by a husband was not a crime.
Bodily autonomy was the ESSENCE of abolitionism & suffrage.
The political & intellectual leaders of the movement—Stanton, Anthony, Lucy Stone—said repeatedly that the right to control your own body, to decide if and when to get pregnant, was at the center of their work.
The political & intellectual leaders of the movement—Stanton, Anthony, Lucy Stone—said repeatedly that the right to control your own body, to decide if and when to get pregnant, was at the center of their work.
The notion that a fetus had rights equivalent to an adult woman would be ludicrous to them.
So how did suffragists become posthumous spokespeople for the polar opposite of their lives’ work?
Well, it's like the memory of Dr. King.
So how did suffragists become posthumous spokespeople for the polar opposite of their lives’ work?
Well, it's like the memory of Dr. King.
Like MLK, the achievements of suffragists have been sanitized & co-opted to serve agendas they would revile.
First by neutering suffragists of the actual political content of what they stood for.
Then by perverting their message to stand for its utter opposite.//
#Suffrage101
First by neutering suffragists of the actual political content of what they stood for.
Then by perverting their message to stand for its utter opposite.//
#Suffrage101
