Exchange Embrace Grace
Embrace Grace volunteers meet at Mary's House, an organization that helps young women facing unplanned pregnancies in Shreveport, Louisiana. Marilyn Kopp, past president of the Ohio chapter of Feminists for Life, writes that support is critical to enable women in their early 20s facing an unplanned pregnancy to reject abortion and still be able to continue with their life plans, including college.
(Henrietta Wildsmith, The Shreveport Times via AP)
Marilyn Kopp, past president of Ohio chapter of Feminists for Life
Aug. 26 is Women's Equality Day, which commemorates the passage of the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution in 1920 granting women the right to vote. Another landmark anniversary in women's history is Jan. 22, 1973, when the Supreme Court's Roe v. Wade decision legalized abortion in the United States.
Many contemporary feminists consider abortion to be an integral part of women's rights. As such, they are unaware that the same women who fought for the right to vote also fought for the rights of the unborn to be born and for their mothers to be supported. It's important to understand the suffragists' adamant opposition to abortion as we continue the fight for equal rights today.
Our feminist foremothers recognized abortion as a symptom of women's oppression, not a solution to it. In 1869, Mattie Brinkerhoff wrote, "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."
They also recognized that abortion is an injustice against fetal life that begins with injustice against female life. "Men must no longer insult all womanhood by saying that freedom means the degradation of woman. Every woman knows that if she were free, she would never bear an unwished-for child, nor think of murdering one before its birth," wrote free love advocate and first woman presidential candidate Victoria Woodhull in 1875.
Abortion was classified as "child murder," on the same level as infanticide, in the radical feminist newspaper The Revolution, published by Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton. The Revolution refused to accept paid advertisements from patent medicines, because they were thinly disguised abortifacients. Such ads were a major source of income for women's periodicals at the time, and the loss of that revenue in part contributed to driving The Revolution into bankruptcy.
Today, most women do not abort out of freedom of choice, but out of a desperate sense that they have no other choices. It is unjust today, as it was a century ago, for women to feel forced to choose between their life plans or their own children in order to participate freely and equally in society. Our feminist foremothers' insights on abortion and women's rights are still relevant - and badly needed - in today's divisive debate. This is not slavishly adhering to tradition, but rather creating a firm understanding of where we have come from in order for us to have a clear vision of where we need to go.
According to a recent report by the Guttmacher Institute, college-aged women 20-to-24 years old continue to be the highest risk group for having abortions.
More than 20 years ago, Feminists for Life initiated a College Outreach Program to provide assistance to pregnant and parenting students on campuses nationwide. We involve students, faculty and administrators in identifying support such as housing for parents and their babies, child care, telecommuting options and maternity coverage in student health care plans.
How can we honestly say women have freedom of choice without access to any of these resources?
In addition, there are more pregnancy care centers nationwide that offer free support for those facing an unplanned pregnancy than there are abortion clinics. These centers provide assistance with social services, pre- and post-natal medical care, adoption counseling, housing and referrals for employment and child care. We need to make women aware of these options. We need to encourage support and nonviolent solutions to problem pregnancies in order to achieve consistent justice and true equality.
We can resolve to work together to end this tragic social experiment on women and children and make abortion unthinkable by offering life-affirming alternatives. Peace begins, after all, in the womb.
Marilyn Kopp of Cleveland served for ten years as president of the Ohio chapter of Feminists for Life of America.