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
Their interests began to diverge somewhat as they grew older. As the drive for women's suffrage gained momentum, Anthony began to form alliances with more conservative groups, such as the Women's Christian Temperance Union, the nation's largest women's organization and a supporter of women's suffrage.
Such moves irritated Stanton, who said, "I get more radical as I get older, while she seems to grow more conservative." In 1895 Stanton published "The Woman's Bible", which attacked the use of the "Bible" to relegate women to an inferior status. It became a highly controversial best-seller. The NAWSA voted to disavow any connection with it despite Anthony's strong objection that such a move was unnecessary and hurtful.
Even so, Anthony refused to assist with the book's preparation, telling Stanton: "You say 'women must be emancipated from their superstitions before enfranchisement will have any benefit,' and I say just the reverse, that women must be enfranchised before they can be emancipated from their superstitions."
Despite such friction, their relationship continued to be close. When Stanton died in 1902, Anthony wrote to a friend: "Oh, this awful hush! It seems impossible that voice is stilled which I have loved to hear for fifty years. Always I have felt I must have Mrs. Stanton's opinion of things before I knew where I stood myself. I am all at sea..."