The American Feminist

The American Feminist, Summer 1995

Women's Groups March in Wrong Direction

Fifty thousand women marched in Washington, D.C., on a beautiful day in April to protest violent acts against women, including rape and domestic abuse. The founders of the feminist movement in this country would applaud these women's tactics, even if they would disagree with a part of their message.

As members of Feminists for Life, we defend women's rights, and believe they do not come at the expense of others, especially our own children. The founding members of the feminist movement knew this, and the most eloquent among them, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, said it best: "When we see that women are treated as property, it is degrading to women that we treat our children as property to be disposed of as we see fit."

Too bad that the women who recently marched in the streets to protest violence do not see the inconsistency of simultaneously supporting abortion, which is nothing more than a brutal act of violence against the most vulnerable among us: women facing crisis pregnancies and their children.

Those of us who espouse a consistent life ethic believe that the taking of any life at any time for any reason is wrong, whether by euthanasia, capital punishment or abortion. Clearly this also includes the killing of clinic workers.

As classic feminists, FFL members oppose all forms of violence, including abortion, as they are inconsistent with the core feminist principles of justice, nonviolence and nondiscrimination.

Our feminist foremothers Stanton, Susan B. Anthony and others began the fight for a woman's right to vote in the late 19th century, and were met with opposition tactics that included public derision, incarceration, and even forced starvation. Despite their fortitude, neither Anthony nor Stanton lived to see their dream of women's suffrage come true.

It wasn't until Stanton's daughter took up the fight after the turn of the century that the tactic of mass protest came to be used in the struggle for women's right to vote. The younger Stanton took her message to women factory workers in East Coast cities. Spurred on by Stanton's words, women workers marched into the streets to protests the abysmal working conditions they faced at the hands of their employers, including low wages, dangerous work and 15-hour working days. And when these women streamed out of the factories in protest, they took with them children who worked at their sides - children who suffered many of the same abuses as the women.

Stanton's grassroots activist tactics worked, and this year women are celebrating the 75th anniversary of the passage of the amendment giving women the right to vote.

While Feminists for Life proudly worked alongside other women's groups for the passage of the Violence Against Women Act, we look forward to the day when the matriarchs of the modern women's movement join pro-life feminists to oppose all forms of violence.

Until then, those who rationalize violence against our children while protesting violence against women are just marching in the wrong direction.