Did the first feminists favour abortion?
Feminists also condemned abortion. They insisted it was immoral to kill an unborn child. Susan B. Anthony, Victoria Woodhill, and virtually every other noted feminist leader of the last century described abortion as “infanticide” and “child-murder.” They also asserted that abortion was just another tool by which women were exploited. While they did not exonerate women from the crime, leaders such as Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Matilda Gage charged that abortion was a “degradation of women” and that “most of the responsibility for this crime lies at the door of the male sex.” Alice Paul, author of the original Equal Rights Amendment (1923), stated that “abortion is the ultimate exploitation of women,” the escape route men use to avoid responsibility for their own sexual acts. These visionaries would not have been shocked by the results of a 1984 study that found that 60% of women seeking abortions felt “forced” to do so by others.
