6 Famous Remarkable Women Who Wouldn't Be Allowed to March

What do Mary Wollstonecraft, Fannie Lou Hamer, and Dorothy Day have in common?

Organizers of the Women’s March decided to remove the pro-life group, New Wave Feminists, from their partnership page. In order to ensure there would be no misunderstanding, they made it clear that it was precisely because of the group's pro-life stance that they were removed as sponsors. “The Women’s March’s platform is pro-choice and that has been our stance from day one,” the organizers said. “The anti-choice organization in question is not a partner of the Women’s March on Washington.”

So now that we know that pro-life feminists are not wanted at the march, I thought it would be interesting to consider six remarkable women who also wouldn't be welcome.

1) Elizabeth Cady Stanton. Few feminists are as well known and revered as Elizabeth Cady Stanton. She was one of the pioneers and long-term champions of women's rights. Stanton didn't see motherhood and feminism as mutually exclusive. In fact, she was the devoted mother of seven children who reportedly called infanticide a "crying evil."

For believing that, Elizabeth Cady Stanton would be unwelcome in the Women's March.

 

2) Mary Wollstonecraft is one of the earliest known feminists and revered as an intellectual giant. She is probably most famous for writing "A Vindication of the Rights of Woman" in 1792 which stated:

“Women becoming, consequently, weaker, in mind and body, than they ought to be, were one of the grand ends of their being taken into account, that of bearing and nursing children, have not sufficient strength to discharge the first duty of a mother; and sacrificing to lasciviousness the parental affection, that ennobles instinct, either destroy the embryo in the womb, or cast it off when born. Nature in everything demands respect, and those who violate her laws seldom do so with impunity."

Mary died as a result of giving birth to her second child, Mary, who would later become Mary Shelley who would write one of the greatest novels of all time about the dangers of science not heeding morality, "Frankenstein."

Oh, and I know many would argue that oh, that Wollstonecraft's views on abortion were simply a product of her time. But they would also argue that millions of women were procuring abortions back then as a reason it needed to be legalized. So they can't have it both ways. It's also difficult (and insuting) to think that Mary Wollstonecraft, who so bravely made the case for women's equality, would be cowed by the conventions of her time.

 

3) Norma McCovey. In the ultimate irony, the woman who became infamous as Jane Roe in the landmark Roe v. Wade case, later converted and became pro-life, dedicating her life to overturning the decision. She even said, "The holocaust against the unborn is the greatest sin they could ever do or even ever participate in."

I'm pretty sure McCorvey wouldn't want to march. But even if she did, she wouldn't be welcome.

 

4) Dorothy Day was one of the great Catholic champions of the poor. She was also pressured into having an abortion as a young woman, a decision she regretted for the rest of her life. She even reportedly said, "that birth control and abortion are genocide." So the great Catholic woman who said, "I firmly believe that our salvation depends on the poor" would not be welcome in the Women's March. Kind of telling, huh?

 

5) Fannie Lou Hamer is an African-American inductee of the National Women's Hall of Fame and a recipient of the National Sojourner Truth Meritorious Service Award. But she might not have been welcome in the upcoming Women's March.

As a victim of eugenic sterilization, Hamer knew better that most the true purpose behind the birth control and abortion movement. Fannie went in to the hospital as a young woman to have a tumor removed when the doctor also performed a hysterectomy as a part of Mississippi's plan to reduce the number of poor blacks in the state. Fannie coined the phrase "Mississippi appendectomy" as a euphemism for the involuntary sterilization of black women. Because she was unable to have children, she and her husband adopted two poor children.

As a delegate to the White House Conference on Food, Nutrition and Health, Fannie reportedly stood up against the idea that abortion helps children, calling it a form of genocide. “I didn’t come to talk about birth control," she reportedly said. "I came here to get some food to feed poor, hungry people. Why are they carrying on that kind of talk?”

One of the more famous phrases, Hamer reportedly repeated often was that that she was "sick and tired of being sick and tired." That feeling is sadly contagious.

 

6) Susan B. Anthony published a newspaper called "The Revolution" that ran several articles and columns decrying abortion. It is also believed by many that she wrote of abortion in the same newspaper:

Guilty? Yes no matter what the motive, love of ease, or desire to save from suffering the unborn innocent, the woman is awfully guilty who commits the deed. It will burden her conscience in life, it will burden her soul in death; but oh! Thrice guilty is he who, for selfish gratification, heedless of her prayers, indifferent to her fate, drove her to the desperation which impels her to the crime.

She also movingly said in 1889, “Sweeter even than to have had the joy of children of my own has it been for me to help bring about a better state of things for mothers generally, so that their unborn little ones could not be willed away from them.”

For that, Susan B. Anthony would not be welcome in the Women's March.

This march isn't about women, it's about the legalized right to kill the unborn. Anyone who says different is pushing an agenda.