Customer Reviews

ProLife Feminism: Yesterday and Today

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What an eye-opener to see that the feminist foremothers did not support anything like the abortion-supporting and male-bashing "feminism" of today; but they were instead women who valued love and equality in marriage, and who valued the lives of both mother and child in a crisis pregnancy. Far from being motivated to oppose abortion by a concern about the mother's health alone, they saw the deaths of the unborn children and the risks the mothers took as evidence of problems women faced in society instead of any part of the solution to them.

It's long past time for women who value our freedoms and our rights to read this book and others like it, and recognize that preserving our rights does not mean supporting the taking away of the lives of our unborn sisters and daughters. It's not us vs. them. We can do much, much better for us *and* them.

I found this book to be the missing link between the pioneering feminist advocacy of yesteryear and today's female-dominated pro-life movement. It effectively challenges the notion that feminists must, indeed CAN, defend abortion as a means of securing women's full emancipation.

The book's credibility lies in the presentation of the information. Rather than simply asserting that our feminist forebears believed such-and-such, the editors present these women in their very own words and in full context, leaving no room for speculation about exactly what they said and why.

This book ought to be required reading in every women's studies program, though the challenge it presents to neo-feminist orthodoxy is the very reason why it probably won't be.

For a few decades now, some so-called "feminists" have promoted the idea that legal abortion is necessary to the emancipation of women--even more important, they claim, than the right to vote. But real feminists, in the classic feminist tradition of Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Alice Paul, recognize that abortion actually perpetuates the marginalization, exploitation, and abuse of women. Want to learn how? Read this book! For further reading, check out Pro-Life Feminism: Different Voices, also available through Amazon.com.

One of my favorite things about this book is the biographical sketches of the women who wrote. They are a great account of the struggles which these women overcame in their lives to try to help others.

This book purports to be a feminist polemic, but fails for several practical reasons.

Until the invention of antiseptic procedures in the 1930s, all surgery carried risk of infection and possible death. Bans on abortion (which were not enacted until the turn of the 20th century) were not a measure of fetal protection, but a response to the realities of Victorian double standards and antisepsis.

While legislators could have just as easily prohibited tonsilectomies, they decided to focus on a procedure exclusively related to women because conventional logic held women did not realy like sexual relations (even with their husbands)--only doing it to become mothers, and the act of procreation was what ultimately made husbands faithful.

Most educated people now also know that if a husband is truly determined to leave his family, a wife's desire for children will not produce a serious change of heart. Furthermore, the birth control methods that we take for granted were not available, and many of the foremothers of feminism mentioned in this book were also ingrained with the idea that good girls did not talk about anything sexual period.

During that time period, it was not uncommon for "well-respected" husbands to have extramartial affairs, and they unsuprisingly brought home sexually transmitted diseases. In the age of AIDS, this silence is not only impractical, but outright dangerous. Yet, according to this model, we have to return to the exact set of sexual circumstances governing early feminists. No thank you.

The advent of penicillin and antibiotics in the 1930's meant that infections could be prevented, although laws restricting LEGAL abortion still remained on the books. THe law failed to keep up with medical advances and as a result, non-connected women and their fetuses suffered at the hands of unskilled quacks who wanted to exploit the desparation of women legally prohibited from using doctors.

It is unrealistic to assume Anthony and Stanton would have opposed the relegatization of abortion in the 1960's and 1970's, just as it is to assume their actions and words in an earlier era would still have the exact same relevance today.

To use their support against racism as an analogy, although they had very enlightened attitudes for their time, Anthony and Stanton's language and acceptance of segregated facilities is unquestionably antiquated and unprogessive in today's world. However, this is the logical parallel to the anti-abortion movement's historical revisionism.