Organizational Background and Activities

Feminists for Life is an anti-choice organization based in the United States which builds upon the "feminist" spin nauseatingly woven into some anti-choice rhetoric. "Women deserve better than abortion," their literature states. Instead of calling for improvements to sexual health education and access to contraception in order to prevent unintended pregnancy, they call for women to carry to term and parent after pregnancy has already occurred. Their recommendations glorify motherhood as a role for women and condemn women to the natural functioning of their bodies. This is reflected in their president Serrin Foster's assertion that Feminists for Life and pro-choice activists should work together in order to make the world more "woman-friendly": i.e. call for more day care etc. This action in and of itself is not negative, however, Foster fails to acknowledge that a pro-choice activist supports the full range of choices that women have when they are pregnant. Pro-choice activists will not work with Feminists for Life because they only support one choice: carrying a pregnancy to term (after which point the mother is strongly encouraged to parent). Foster's speech on this topic and other "recommended reading" from Feminists for Life may be found here.

Feminists for Life appropriate important figures from feminist history. For example, they argue that Susan B. Anthony would take their side in the debate on abortion today because in her time she condemned it as harmful to women and families. To unsuspecting online researchers who happen across this article and are less able to place it into historical context, it presents a reasonably sound objection to abortion on "feminist" grounds. However, feminist historians will note that in Susan B. Anthony's time and location (late 19th century in the United States), contraceptive methods were not readily available and so the results of marital indiscretions could be much more visible and therefore disastrous. Abortion was illegal and so often was the choice of women who were pregnant out of wedlock or whose partners did not or could not acknowledge the relationship publicly. From the perspective of many married women, the availability of abortion in a community precluded pre- and extramarital intercourse. Thus, privileged upper class women such as Susan B. Anthony and her early feminist colleagues generally viewed abortion as a threat, denouncing it in their organizing.

Since the late 19th century, there have been many technological and social movements that have altered the circumstances under which women can make reproductive choices. The invention of the Pill, the increased numbers of women who work outside the home, and the Supreme Court decision of Roe v. Wade are just a few of the changes that have taken place in the 100+ years since Susan B. Anthony's day. So, Feminist for Life's basis of their "feminist" claim that abortion is bad for women because Susan B. Anthony said so in 1889 has little or no relevance in 2009. Furthermore, it is still possible to view Susan B. Anthony's claims as feminist within the context of their time - in a time when families were larger, labour unions had yet to organise and women could not earn their own discretionary wages, it was very important for women to ensure that their husbands were not spending their wages on the costs associated with extramarital affairs. When viewed in context, their condemnation of abortion may be considered acceptable on feminist grounds.