Susan B. Anthony and the Abortion Debate

I realize I am a bit late to this debate but the furor surrounding it fascinates me.

I’ll start with a little background. A number of people have posted about Sarah Palin’s involvement with The Susan B. Anthony List SBAL) which is a conservative women’s group which seeks to fund anti-choice women politician’s in there respective bids for office.

Now the SBAL claims to be a feminist organization and backs this up by citing how a number of nineteenth century suffragists and early feminists were themselves anti-choice (or pro-life as they would say).

Now comes the part that interests me. In response to these claims about early feminist activists, modern academics and bloggers (including some on feministing) have responded with a resounding “no they were not!!”.

Now I was really interested because for once (as much as I hate to admit it). The anti-choice argument made the most sense. They presented well documented sources to back up their claims that early feminists were in fact anti-choice.

After following up on their sources, I found them to be correct and not miquoted and even found several other quotations that were even more convincing than the one’s used on the SBAL’s website including a quote from Susan B. Anthony’s journal in which she refers to her sister in law’s abortion as “tampering with herself”

The feminist response to these claims were wobbly at best as they all try to shed doubt on these quotes claiming that they are open for interpretation and that the existance of doubt is enough to discount them altogether.

This really confused me so I did a little more research (I don’t claim to be an expert) and as far as I can tell Susan B. Anthony probably was against abortion.

When I came to that conclusion my first thought was SO WHAT!! nineteenth century society was very different from that of today. Anthony and her contemporaries were coming from a differend world view and had different goals than modern feminists. It seems anachronistic to me to expect that nineteenth century morals, even those held by someone as forward thinking as Susan B. Anthony could be carbon copied into a modern context.

It is totally irelevant that Anthony was against abortion, she spoke for her time and the needs she saw in that time. It is certainly relevant to point out though that her beliefs about abortion would not focus on the personhood of the fetus or even the criminality of the abortion itself. She was a product of her time as we are a product of ours.

I can understand that she is a feminist heroin and that it is difficult to accept that not everything about her was impeccable. Then again anyone who has taken Women and Gender Studies 100 can tetll you that early feminism was frought with problems ranging from racism to classism. Feminism was not born perfect anf neither were its founders.

To further illustrate my point I will use the example of Emily Murphy who was integral in gaining women’s suffrage in Canada (something I wholeheartely support as a Canadian woman). Unforetunately Murphy was also a firm supporter of human eugenics and helped put into place government policy in Alberta that allowed the forced sterilization of persons with disabilities and many other groups of people. The guidelines were very vague so a person could be deemed unfit for showing sexually promiscuous behaviour or a lower I.Q. (as a person who has both a physical and mental disability this makes me cringe).

As much as I love to vote and do at every election I would not support human eugenics simply on the basis that one who the women who gave me the right to the former also supported the latter. I will make my own decisions based on my own situation and though I thank early feminist for all the work they did, I refuse to turn them into idols on a pedestal whose opinions are eternal and can be used word for word forever. They were individuals with their own goals based on their own experiences. I will not allow that to stop me being pro-choice and it shouldn’t stop you either!