Early Feminist Leaders Opposed Abortion

   The early leaders of the women's right movement believed abortion was wrong. Alice Paul, author of the original Equal Rights Amendment, said, "abortion is the ultimate exploitation of women." 

   A simplified quote from another early leader of the movement, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, says she said, "If it is degrading to treat a woman as property, it it no better for a woman to treat her own child as property. Stanton's actual words were, " When we consider that women are treated as property, it is degrading to women that we should treat our children as property to be disposed of as we see fit." 

   Susan B. Anthony, one of the founders of the feminist movement, opposed abortion.

   The first female candidate for president, Victoria Woodhull, wrote that, "Every woman knows that if she were free, she would never bear an unwished-for child, nor think of murdering one before its birth." 

  That quote suggests the women were only having abortions because men were forcing them to do so. Sometimes, perhaps it was, the men forced themselves upon the women, and after which wished to erase the evidence of what they did.