After a child is, no one has a right to tamper with its existence…. [When people] talk about children having a right to be born…. I mean that no one has a right to jeopardize a life which has already begun ever so brief an existence…. My meaning shuts at once and forever the door of abortion….

Abortion, intentionally accomplished, is criminal in the first degree, and should be regarded as murder. Yet women have been taught to look lightly on this offence, and to consider it perfectly justifiable up to the period of quickening. “The embryo has no life before that period,” they will say in justification of the act. I have even heard a woman, who acknowledged to several successful abortions, accomplished by her own hands upon herself, say, “Why, there is no harm in it, any more than in drowning a blind kitten. It is nothing better than a kitten, before it is born.” I was a young girl myself when I heard this, and I accepted the statement as a true one. Nor did I dream of questioning it, until, in later years, I became thoroughly acquainted with sexual physiology, and comprehended the wonderful economy of nature in the generation and development of the human germ.

The act of abortion which I had hitherto regarded as a trivial thing, at once became in my eyes the grossest misdemeanor—nay, the most aggravated crime. Being guided by this experience, I judge that this offence is perpetrated by women who are totally ignorant of the laws of their being. Consequently, the surest preventative against this crime will be a thorough teaching to women, even before marriage, of the physiology, hygiene, duties and obligations of maternity….

From the moment of conception, the embryo is a living thing, leading a distinct, separate existence from the mother, though closely bound to her…. From almost the earliest stage, the form of the future being is indicated, and it has separate heart-beats, distinctly perceptible through the intervening tissues of the mother’s body, which cover it. It is a human being to all intents and purposes. The period called quickening¹ is a merely fictitious period, which does not indicate the first motion of the embryo. These first motions are not usually detected… until they have acquired considerable force.

Nature has put this little creature—this small man or woman, as yet all undeveloped—in a place of seeming security, and has placed every guard around it to keep it safely until the hour shall come when it is fully prepared to make a complete change in its mode of existence. If by intent or accident it is disturbed before that period, the whole of nature’s plans are thwarted, and nothing is in readiness…. Natural parturation² may have its perils, but unnatural parturation slays its hundreds where that slays one. Yet young married women consider [induced] miscarriage a trifling affair!

….It is a sin against nature…. And it is a crime in the fullest extent of the term, because it is murder ….

But no; I must not be too hard upon all these unwomanly women. Their ignorance must be held responsible for their sins. And men must share the responsibility too….

I have already said that knowledge among women will do much towards decreasing this crime. Do not be content to tell women it is wrong, and then stop there. Women are impatient of being treated like children, or like unreasoning beings; nor do they like to be dictated to. Tell them the how and the why of the whole matter, and they will discover the wrong themselves, and feel the full force of it, far more than they ever can by taking it merely on the say-so of men.

Then the laws which are already upon our statute books should be strictly enforced…. And husbands and seducers should be made to share the punishment as accessories to the crime….

Not only every maker, advertiser and seller of patent medicines, warranted to “remove female obstructions,” should be subjected to prosecution and punishment, but every publisher who prints an advertisement of this sort should be held equally guilty. Community will not be injured in the least by the suppression of these advertisements; for physicians of every shade of practice will sustain me in declaring that they do harm and harm only to women…. [T]heir real intent is for the procurement of abortion, and so everybody knows.

Like Sarah Norton, little is known about the life of Eliza Bisbee Duffey beyond her writings, which focus on the education of women.

After Cornell University began admitting women in 1870, thanks to the efforts of Sarah Norton and Susan B. Anthony, debates about women in higher education intensified. In 1873, Edward Clarke, a physician and former faculty member at Harvard University Medical School, wrote Sex in Education; Or, A Fair Chance for the Girls, arguing that the higher education pursued by young men would endanger the mental and physical health of women. Women could be educated separately, he claimed, to avoid risking such problems as “abnormally active cerebration.” Eliza Bisbee Duffey was one of the feminists who entered the controversy, publishing No Sex In Education; Or, An Equal Chance for Both Boys and Girls the following year. Duffey was not intimidated by Clarke’s medical degree, but claimed the authoritative advantage of “being a woman… being able to test my theories by personal experiment.” The book was a lively argument for “the equal and co-education of the sexes.”

As the excerpts at the beginning of this article show, Duffey’s concern for women’s education extended beyond the question of formal schooling. Like other feminists of the time, she believed women also deserve “a thorough acquaintanceship with the organs and functions of their own bodies, in order that they may guard against disease and suffering in themselves and that they may bring forth healthy children.” Her books What Women Should Know (1873) and The Relations of the Sexes (1876) were devoted to this purpose.

It is not difficult to recognize in the excerpts themes common among early American feminists. The Revolution, readers will recall, was known for its policy that “no quack or immoral advertisements [for patent medicines] will be admitted,” because “Restellism [abortion] has long found in these broths of Beelzebub, its securest hiding place.”

Women who wrote to The Revolution likewise believed that education regarding sexual physiology would help deter abortion. Upon hearing an educational lecture by Dr. Anna Densmore, a teacher wrote:

In reading the article [which appeared in The Revolution] on ‘Child Murder,’ I could not repress the wish that the whole world could have heard Dr. Densmore’s remarks at Bunyan Hall upon that theme. Those who had the privilege will never forget the startling effect of the truths that she revealed relative to the primitive and ever present vitality of the developing embryo, as evidenced by the fainting of several self-convicted participators in the crime of premeditated child destruction before birth…. I am sure that women would rarely dare to destroy the product of conception if they did not fully believe that the little being was devoid of life during all the earlier period of gestation….

Dr. Densmore demonstrated to us fully and clearly that the fulfillment of life processes were going on from the very beginning of embryonic development…. And that even before the mother could assure herself that she was to wear the crown of maternity by realizing the movements of the child, that the educated ear of the physician could often distinguish the beating of its heart. These are the facts that women need to know.

“Eliza Bisbee Duffey makes a feminist case against abortion and, by encouraging the education of women, lays the foundation for Feminists for Life’s modern-day College Outreach Program,” said FFL President Serrin Foster.

Pregnant women and parents still face tremendous challenges. In addition to education, pregnant women and parents deserve practical resources and support. For this reason, Feminists for Life is dedicated to systematically eliminating the root causes that drive women to abortion. Women deserve better.

Related article

“Herstory: Sarah F. Norton and Eliza Bisbee Duffey” by Mary Krane Derr 
The American Feminist Fall 1999: Back on Campus, pg. 20 
http://www.feministsforlife.org/taf/1999/fall/Fall99.pdf

References

Mary Krane Derr, Rachel MacNair, and Linda Naranjo-Huebl, ProLife Feminism Yesterday & Today: Expanded Second Edition (Xlibris, 2005)

The Revolution (suffragist newspaper, New York, 1868)

1. In the past, some people believed that fetal life began when a mother first detected movement. This moment was called “quickening.”
2. “Natural paturation” refers to giving birth. “Unnatural parturation” refers to abortion.