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"Everything
Old is New Again"
-- Part One of
Two
Editor's note. Please send me your comments at
daveandrusko@hotmail.com
The title of the provocative column is, "Women Are People
Too:
What Susan B. Anthony
knew that Gloria Steinem doesn't." Written by Marjorie Dannenfelser,
president of the pro-life Susan B. Anthony List, the op-ed does an excellent
job reminding us how far a strain of pro-abortion feminism is removed from
the strongly anti-abortion sentiments of the Founding Mothers of American
feminism.
Dannenfelser uses the occasion of Women's History Month
(which ends today) to tell her readers that
"Sometime after its beginnings in the organized suffrage movement, the
American women's movement lost its way." The "hierarchy of values inverted:
The anatomy of the person serving the cause became more important than the
cause itself."
But there is good news: "a
natural correction is occurring." Whereas three decades ago "the abortion
issue was allowed to hijack the modern women's movement," today "women in
politics are more like the suffragists of the early 1900s than the activists
of the 1970s," Dannenfelser writes.
"They are closer to
Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Alice Paul than to Betty
Friedan, Gloria Steinem, and Jane Fonda."
Speaking of Susan B.
Anthony, we learn that "her strength and success hinged upon the fact that
she fought for transcendent principles," including opposition to slavery and
abortion. Dannenfelser writes that Anthony "was categorical about the
human-rights violation that abortion entailed: 'It will burden her
conscience in life. It will burden her soul in the grave.'"
Another famous 19th
century suffragette, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, agreed, writing, "When we
consider that women are treated as property, it is degrading to women to
treat our children as property to be disposed of when she sees fit."
Dannenfelser ends by
quoting from something we've discussed several times in this space: a
January 22 op-ed by pro-abortion veterans Frances Kissling and Kate
Michelman. The former head of "Catholics for a Free Choice" and NARAL,
respectively, they lamented that abortion advocates need to "regain
the moral high ground."
Dannenfelser shrewdly
observes, "The high ground definitely was lost when gender elbowed out human
rights. That's why the movement is becoming passé."
Surely she is
correct. Genuine, life-affirming feminists are taking back what ought to
have theirs all along: a commitment to equality which embraces both mother
and unborn child.
Part Two |
