Susan B. Anthony abortion dispute
Susan B. Anthony (1820–1906) is widely known for her dedication to three issues: women's suffrage, abolition and temperance. She was raised by abolitionist Quaker parents, later attending Unitarian churches and becoming an agnostic.
As a young woman she worked in the temperance movement and as a speaker and organizer for the American Anti-Slavery Society. She is known primarily, however, 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.
In 1979 she was honored as the first American woman to be represented on U.S. currency, the Susan B. Anthony dollar.
Susan B. Anthony List
Founded in 1993 by sociologist and psychologist Rachel MacNair, the SBA List was a response to the success of the abortion rights group EMILY's List, which was partly responsible for bringing about the 1992 "Year of the Woman", in which a significant number of women who favored abortion rights were elected to Congress. MacNair wished to help anti-abortion women gain high public office. She recruited Marjorie Dannenfelser and Jane Abraham as the first experienced leaders of SBA List. Dannenfelser is now president of the organization and Abraham is chairwoman of the board. Named for suffragist Susan B. Anthony, SBA List identifies itself with Anthony and several 19th-century women's rights activists. SBA List argues that Anthony and other early feminists were opposed to abortion, a view that has been challenged by scholars and abortion-rights activists. Anthony scholar Ann D. Gordon and Anthony biographer Lynn Sherr write that Anthony "spent no time on the politics of abortion".