Caroline Elizabeth Sarah Norton Quotes

First female presidential candidate & first divorcee to run for that office. This quotation is quite remarkable for several reasons. Woodhull was far ahead of not only her time but the other feminists and suffragettes at the time in demanding equal right for all women in all thinks including free love. She was generally viewed as an amoral radical. Yet on this critical issue, the was an opponent of abortion and one of the first people to ever claim that a fetus had rights.
While most people at the time opposed abortion, it was based on religious doctrine. Woodhull based her opposition on an equal rights argument—perhaps the first American to do so. Note, that like other feminist leaders of the time, she opposed abortion. However, between the economic pressures and the illegality of birth control devices and information provision, abortion was a critical decision that had to be faced by many women. Later, feminist leadership had to come to grips with the issue of who makes the decision in these areas, and placed the right of the woman to make these decisions, as opposed to husbands, fathers and government, as the highest priority. Then, when the drivers for abortion could not be eliminated, it was women who were criminalized. Feminists then fought for the right of abortion and the right of the woman to make decisions, but feminine leadership has never—in America—been advocates of abortion as opposed to the right of abortion, a subtlety that often is lost.

Churches are political organizations too and are subject to the forces of their membership. In the case of the Southern Baptist Convention in 1971 they passed resolutions to assure the right of a woman to have an abortion to protect her health. The position on abortion changed steadily thereafter to even pass Constitutional amendments to ban abortions except to save the life of the mother. See {614356},54122, {614358}, {614359}, {614360}, {614361} for the dynamic history of the change.

This was the traditional Jewish view of abortion and infanticide. It is the view of the Orthodox Jews of today, but the larger body of Reform Jews, like many Protestant sects, do not equate abortion to murder or infanticide.

At the time of the debate, the average pregnant woman’s risk of death was much higher from delivery than for an early abortion.

Reacting to the public and media outrage at Oliver North shredding documents in the Iran-contra scandal:

At the time, condoms and other forms of contraceptives were illegal to buy, sell, possess or own. As late as 1963 a Connecticut druggist was sentenced to jail for filling a doctor’s prescription for condoms and selling them to a married couple even thought the woman might die if she again became pregnant. The Supreme Court (Griswald v. Connecticut) established that a woman had a right to control her own reproductive cycle and the government had no business interfering with a privacy right possessed by a couple. Roe v. Wade established the right to an abortion. The same moral compunctions used with abortion were, and still are used by some to oppose any form of artificial birth control. They argued: preventing a life was as serious a moral failure as taking one. Many Catholics, many evangelical and fundamentalist protestants, and some orthodox Muslims are today morally opposed to birth control and believe that the government should ban birth control as it once was in the United States.

This is very surprising to most modern observers. If a pregnant woman died, there were in some cases those in the family who were just as happy that she passed away before the child was born as the laws of inheritance and succession were dependent on which children lived. The father might be away, and someone would not want a new or another heir, might just bury the pregnant woman. The Romans actually had some very sophisticated medical skills. Julius Caesar, for example, was born via what we today call a “Ceasarean Section.” If a pregnant woman was close term, and she dies, the Romans had the skill to do a C Section on the dead woman and could sometimes save the baby. That ancient Romans considered the fetus as a potential life, is sometimes used by anti abortion forces. However, if they do their research, they would find that Roman law allowed abortions. The decision however had to be the mother’s and the father’s. What this law did is to preserve the possibility of the fetus’s being born alive with surgery when the mother was dead and the father might not be near.

If a state or community legally decides that a fetus is a person, there are many situations where there is a conflict of interest between the mother to be and the fetus. A pregnant woman, having a single drink of alcohol, potentially dangers the fetus (called Fetal Alcohol Syndrome). Smoking is clearly hazardous to the health of the fetus (underweight babies and more infant mortality and even more SIDS deaths. A diet to keep a mother thinner may not be nutritious for the fetus, A few states and local government have started prosecuting pregnant women for their personal behavior that might be detrimental to the fetus—often the purpose is to assert the right of the state to regulate the behavior of the pregnant woman so that the state can control abortion.

In American history Abortion has been legal for more time than it has been illegal. And most of the laws prohibiting it were unconstitutional. Even the Roman Catholic Church did not take the position that life begins at conception until 1869 so the notion, far from being a long standing tradition is just the opposite.