Were the original feminists pro-abortion?
Our feminist foremothers were adamantly opposed to abortion. One needs only to turn to The Revolution, Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton’s publication, to discover this fact.
In this 1869 publication, Anthony termed abortion “child murder,” and Stanton classified abortion as “infanticide.” When addressing a woman’s responsibility in having an abortion, Anthony said, “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!” As early as 1772, Mary Wollstonecraft discouraged women who wished to “discharge the first duty of a mother; and . . . either destroy the embryo in the womb, or cast it off when born.”
For more information, see Feminists for Life of America