Maternal Rights Quotes
At the time, the mother had no legal rights whatsoever over the upbringing of their own children. If the father did not want the mother to nurse a child, she could not. Although born and educated in the United States, she lived mostly in England and was politically active there.
This is very surprising to most modern observers. If a pregnant woman died, there were in some cases those in the family who were just as happy that she passed away before the child was born as the laws of inheritance and succession were dependent on which children lived. The father might be away, and someone would not want a new or another heir, might just bury the pregnant woman. The Romans actually had some very sophisticated medical skills. Julius Caesar, for example, was born via what we today call a “Ceasarean Section.” If a pregnant woman was close term, and she dies, the Romans had the skill to do a C Section on the dead woman and could sometimes save the baby. That ancient Romans considered the fetus as a potential life, is sometimes used by anti abortion forces. However, if they do their research, they would find that Roman law allowed abortions. The decision however had to be the mother’s and the father’s. What this law did is to preserve the possibility of the fetus’s being born alive with surgery when the mother was dead and the father might not be near.
If a state or community legally decides that a fetus is a person, there are many situations where there is a conflict of interest between the mother to be and the fetus. A pregnant woman, having a single drink of alcohol, potentially dangers the fetus (called Fetal Alcohol Syndrome). Smoking is clearly hazardous to the health of the fetus (underweight babies and more infant mortality and even more SIDS deaths. A diet to keep a mother thinner may not be nutritious for the fetus, A few states and local government have started prosecuting pregnant women for their personal behavior that might be detrimental to the fetus—often the purpose is to assert the right of the state to regulate the behavior of the pregnant woman so that the state can control abortion.
First female presidential candidate & first divorcee to run for that office. This quotation is quite remarkable for several reasons. Woodhull was far ahead of not only her time but the other feminists and suffragettes at the time in demanding equal right for all women in all thinks including free love. She was generally viewed as an amoral radical. Yet on this critical issue, the was an opponent of abortion and one of the first people to ever claim that a fetus had rights.
While most people at the time opposed abortion, it was based on religious doctrine. Woodhull based her opposition on an equal rights argument—perhaps the first American to do so. Note, that like other feminist leaders of the time, she opposed abortion. However, between the economic pressures and the illegality of birth control devices and information provision, abortion was a critical decision that had to be faced by many women. Later, feminist leadership had to come to grips with the issue of who makes the decision in these areas, and placed the right of the woman to make these decisions, as opposed to husbands, fathers and government, as the highest priority. Then, when the drivers for abortion could not be eliminated, it was women who were criminalized. Feminists then fought for the right of abortion and the right of the woman to make decisions, but feminine leadership has never—in America—been advocates of abortion as opposed to the right of abortion, a subtlety that often is lost.
