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.
History of Rochester, New York
Susan B. Anthony, a national leader of the women's suffrage movement, was from Rochester. In a case that generated a national controversy, she was arrested for voting in Rochester in 1872, well before it was legal for women to vote. Her trial, United States v. Susan B. Anthony, was held in a federal circuit court presided over by a Supreme Court justice. When the judge directed the jury to deliver a guilty verdict and ordered Anthony to pay a fine of $100, Anthony responded, "I shall never pay a dollar of your unjust penalty", and she never did. As a young woman, she was widely ridiculed for her views on women's rights, but she was increasingly respected as the nation began to take her ideas seriously. She celebrated her eightieth birthday at the White House at the invitation of President William McKinley. The Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, which guaranteed the right of women to vote in 1920, was popularly known as the Susan B. Anthony Amendment because of her decades of work toward its passage, which she did not live to see. Anthony's home is now a National Historic Landmark known as the National Susan B. Anthony Museum and House.