Women's Role Quotes



At the beginning of the United States, the Founding Fathers had seen fit not to restrict a woman’s right to birth control and abortion, both of which were prevalent in Colonial America albeit not very reliable or safe. The first efforts to control abortion were in the 1820s and 1830s. Storer was the first anti-abortion activist. His major issue was that abortion diminished America’s fertility rate and with the high fertility of the immigrants, the native Americans would be overwhelmed.


This observation has never been really taken seriously until the women’s movement stimulated historical and sociological studies to test such a hypothesis. More and more people are finding that Tocqueville may have been right on this point albeit still not a majority of scholarly opinion.