Susan B. Anthony was a leader of the American women's suffrage movement whose position on abortion has been the subject of a modern-day dispute. The dispute has primarily been between anti-abortion activists, who say that Anthony expressed opposition to abortion, and acknowledged authorities in her life and work who say that she did not.

Since about 1989, some anti-abortion activists have asserted that Anthony was anti-abortion and would support that side of the modern debate over the issue. A prominent supporter of this viewpoint has been Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of the Susan B. Anthony List, a political organization that seeks to end abortion through the electoral process. Others include Cat Clark and Rachel MacNair of the Feminists for Life, a feminist and anti-abortion organization.

Scholars, especially Ann Dexter Gordon, have disagreed strongly, saying that Anthony showed little interest in the issue of abortion and never expressed opposition to it. Gordon led the Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony Papers project, a 9-year academic undertaking to collect and document 14,000 materials written by those two leaders of the women's rights movement, and she published a six-volume collection of their works. Others on this side of the dispute include Lynn Sherr, author of a biography of Anthony; Harper D. Ward, a researcher associated with the National Susan B. Anthony Museum and House; and Tracy Thomas, a law professor.

The dispute largely revolves around statements that are alleged to have been made by Anthony in opposition to abortion. Scholars say these statements either were not made by Anthony, are not about abortion or have been taken out of context.

Background

Susan B. Anthony (1820–1906) is known primarily for her leadership in the women's suffrage movement, a cause to which she devoted most of her life. The Nineteenth Amendment, which guarantees the right of women to vote, has been called the Susan B. Anthony Amendment because of her efforts to achieve its passage. She was raised by abolitionist Quaker parents, later attending Unitarian churches and becoming an agnostic. As a young woman she also worked in the temperance movement and as a speaker and organizer for the American Anti-Slavery Society. In 1979 she was honored as the first American woman to be represented on U.S. currency, the Susan B. Anthony dollar.

In 1982, the Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony Papers project was initiated at Rutgers University to collect and document all available materials written by Anthony and her co-worker Elizabeth Cady Stanton. Under the leadership of Ann D. Gordon, it gathered some 14,000 documents, more than doubling the sources that previously had been available. Gordon said she noticed in 1989 that some anti-abortion organizations were stating that Susan B. Anthony opposed abortion.

Rosemary Bottcher, an anti-abortion activist with Feminists for Life (FFL), wrote in June 1989, "The early feminists believed that by enhancing the status of women, they could greatly reduce the incidence of abortion. Susan B. Anthony wrote that 'We must reach the root of the evil...' " Two months later, Rachel MacNair, the president of FFL, was quoted saying, "Susan B. Anthony didn't think there was a contradiction" in the idea of being a feminist who is against abortion rights. FFL, a feminist anti-abortion organization that was founded in the early 1970s, said in its mission statement that it, "continues the tradition of early American feminists such as Susan B. Anthony, who opposed abortion". The Susan B. Anthony List (SBA List), which was founded by MacNair in 1992 as a political group with the goal of ending abortion in the United States by supporting anti-abortion politicians, especially women, described Anthony as "an outspoken critic of abortion". Some conservative anti-abortion organizations, such as Concerned Women for America, have made similar statements.

Gordon said the belief that Anthony opposed abortion was "far-fetched", describing it as "what historians call an 'invented memory'—history without foundation in the evidence but with modern utility". She and others began to challenge this idea in public forums such as the Washington Post. Anti-abortion leaders such as Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of the SBA List, used that newspaper and other forums to support their side of this issue.

Arguments A 2006 article by Allison Stevens for Women's eNews said "a scholarly disagreement ...is growing into a heated skirmish over the famous suffragist's position on reproductive rights." Stevens said pro-choice activists were "outraged over what they say is an unproven claim and concerned that their heroine is being appropriated by a community led by the very people Anthony battled during her lifetime: social conservatives".

A week after the Stevens article appeared, author and columnist Stacy Schiff wrote, "There is no question that [Anthony] deplored the practice of abortion, as did every one of her colleagues in the suffrage movement", but Schiff criticized the practice of using "history plucked from both text and time" to create "Anthony the pro-lifer". Schiff said that abortion in the 19th century, unlike today, was a very dangerous and unpredictable procedure.Abortion was more dangerous than childbirth throughout the 19th century. By 1930, medical procedures had improved for both childbirth and abortion but not equally, and induced abortion in the first trimester had become safer than childbirth. In 1973, Roe v. Wade acknowledged that abortion in the first trimester was safer than childbirth. She concluded, "The bottom line is that we cannot possibly know what Anthony would make of today's debate" over the abortion issue, because "the terms do not translate".

Gordon and others strongly disagreed with the idea that Anthony opposed abortion. Gordon, who published a six-volume collection of the works of Susan B. Anthony and her co-worker Elizabeth Cady Stanton, wrote that Anthony "never voiced an opinion about the sanctity of fetal life ... and she never voiced an opinion about using the power of the state to require that pregnancies be brought to term". Gordon said that, for Anthony, the issue of abortion was "a political hot potato", one to avoid; it distracted from her main goal of gaining women the vote. Gordon said the suffrage movement in the 19th century held political and social views—"secularism, the separation of church and state, and women's self-ownership" (women's autonomy)—that do not fit with the modern anti-abortion platform.

In 1999, Ken Burns released a film about the lives of Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton called Not for Ourselves Alone. The SBA List objected in a press release to Burns' portrayal of these two women, saying that "to document Anthony's and Stanton's important work for women's rights without mentioning their abhorrence of abortion is incredibly unjust, considering how passionate they were on the subject." Gordon responded, "It is reasonable to ask, if these nineteenth-century women were passionate and outspoken in their abhorrence of abortion, why did they never do anything about it?"

Christine Stansell, a professor of history at the University of Chicago and author of a book on the history of feminism, said, "neither Anthony nor any other nineteenth-century women's rights reformer led an anti-abortion movement, proposed or supported laws to criminalize abortion, or saw abortion as a political problem."

Gloria Feldt, a former head of Planned Parenthood, said of Anthony that "there's absolutely nothing in anything that she ever said or did that would indicate she was anti-abortion."

In early 2007, Cat Clark, an editor of FFL's quarterly magazine, acknowledged that Anthony spent little time on the subject of abortion, but cited FFL researcher Mary Krane Derr who said Anthony's "stance on abortion" was integral to "her commitment to undo gender oppression".

Law professor Tracy Thomas, writing in the Seattle University Law Review, said the "strategy of creating a narrative of feminist history against abortion"Thomas, Tracy A. (2012). "Misappropriating Women's History in the Law and Politics of Abortion", Seattle University Law Review, Vol. 36, No. 1 was developed by Feminists for Life in the early 1990s. Thomas published a lengthy analysis of what she considered to be inaccuracies in that narrative, saying, "... the narrative is simply not true. Sound bites that have been excised from history are taken out of context to convey a meaning not originally intended." She quoted Annette Ravinsky, a former vice president of the FFL, as saying in published comments, "I really wish my former colleagues would stop twisting the words of dead people to make them mean something they don't ... The early leaders of the women's movement were not against women controlling their bodies." Quoted in Thomas, p. 14

In May 2010, Sarah Palin addressed a meeting of the SBA List, saying Anthony was one of her heroes, and that Palin's own opposition to abortion rights was influenced by her "feminist foremothers". She said "Organizations like the Susan B. Anthony List are returning the woman's movement back to its original roots, back to what it was all about in the beginning. You remind us of the earliest leaders of the woman's rights movement: They were pro-life." In response to this, journalist Lynn Sherr, author of Failure is Impossible: Susan B. Anthony in Her Own Words, joined with Gordon to write an opinion piece for The Washington Post. They said: "We have read every single word that this very voluble—and endlessly political—woman left behind. Our conclusion: Anthony spent no time on the politics of abortion. It was of no interest to her, despite living in a society (and a family) where women aborted unwanted pregnancies." Sherr and Gordon said that their argument "is not over abortion rights. Rather it is about the erosion of accuracy in history and journalism."

SBA List president Marjorie Dannenfelser published her response to Sherr and Gordon, saying that their conclusion "that abortion was nowhere on [Anthony's] radar" was "unfounded on many levels". She said that in Anthony's day, "abortion wasn't even a hot political issue ...Abortion simply wasn't up for debate at a time when society itself was firmly against the practice." Thomas disputed Dannenfelser's assertion that abortion was not a political issue during that period, and she disputed the idea that society firmly opposed abortion. Thomas cited three academic histories, including a history of abortion by James Mohr, who discussed what he called the doctrine of quickening, the belief that it was legally and morally permissible to terminate pregnancy prior to the perception of fetal movement. Mohr said this belief was almost universal during the first decades of the 1800sMohr, James C. Abortion in America: The Origins and Evolution of National Policy, p. 5. Oxford University Press, 1978. . and was pervasive through the 1870s.Mohr (1979), p. 73 As a result, he said, "women believed themselves to be carrying inert non-beings prior to quickening",Mohr (1979), p. 6 and if a woman missed her period, an early sign of pregnancy, either she or her doctor could take steps to "restore menstrual flow".Mohr (1979), p. 4 Mohr said there was a surge in abortions after 1840 and that a study of abortion in New York City published in 1868 concluded that there was approximately one abortion there for every four live births.Mohr (1979), pp. 75, 78–79.