Dr. Bernard Nathanson, co-founder of NARAL, who changed sides on the abortion issue, wrote in his 1979 book Aborting America:

“The U.S. statutes against abortion have a non-sectarian history. They were put on the books when Catholics were a politically insignificant minority...even the Protestant clergy was not a major factor in these laws. Rather, the laws were an achievement of the American Medical Association."

In 1827, Von Baer determined fertilization to be the starting point of individual human life. By the 1850s, medical communities were advocating legislation to protect the unborn. In 1859, the AMA protested legislation which protected the unborn only after “quickening.”

According to contemporary pro-life feminist Mary Krane Derr, “The debate raging over abortion today is not the first one in American history; there was one during the Victorian era.”

Derr writes that despite the large monetary loss involved, The Revolution, the suffragist paper put out by Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton refused to run ads for patent medicines because these were frequently thinly disguised abortifacients.

Victoria Woodhull, the first woman to attempt to run for President, was a fierce opponent of abortion. The Weekly (December 24, 1870) proclaimed, “The rights of children as individuals begin while yet they remain the foetus.”

According to Woodhull: “Men must no longer insult all womanhood by saying that freedom means the degradation of woman. Every woman knows that if she were free, she would never bear an unwished-for child, nor think of murdering one before its birth.” (Evening Standard, November 17, 1875)

“Victorian feminists,” Derr observes, “were highly critical of Victorian sexual ethics. They affirmed the value of sex for pleasure and communication as well as procreation, for men and women alike...they celebrated motherhood itself as a uniquely female power and strength which deserved genuine reverence.”

According to Derr, “From early in the 19th century, Americans—even lay people—were exposed to enough information about embryology to enable them to make a critical and ethically significant distinction between contraception and abortion: the former practice did not terminate a human life but the latter one did.”

In The Radical Remedy in Social Science (1886), feminist and civil libertarian Edward Bond Foote crusaded for acceptance of contraception, insisting it would not only promote the well-being of women, but that it would also reduce the destruction of unborn children, which he termed “a wastefulness of human life.”

Susan B. Anthony called abortion “child-murder” and insisted, “We want prevention, not merely punishment. We must reach the root of the evil...It is practiced by those whose inmost souls revolt from the dreadful deed.”

Anthony recognized that one of the root causes of abortion was the male exploitation of women: “All the articles on this subject that I have read have been from men. They denounce women as alone guilty, and never include man in any plans for the remedy.” (The Revolution, July 8, 1869)

Elizabeth Cady Stanton classified abortion along with the killing of newborns as “infanticide.” (The Revolution, February 5, 1868) According to Stanton: “When we consider that women are treated as property, it is degrading to women that we should treat our children as property to be disposed of as we see fit.” (Letter to Julia Ward Howe, October 16, 1873)

Stanton recognized the social factors causing women to seek abortion: “There must be a remedy even for such a crying evil as this,” she wrote. “But where shall it be found, at least where begin, if not in the complete enfranchisement and elevation of women?” (The Revolution, March 12, 1868)

Mattie Brinkerhoff also recognized that social factors such as poverty and discrimination cause women to seek abortions:

“When a man steals to satisfy hunger, we may safely conclude that there is something wrong in society—so when a woman destroys the life of her unborn child, it is an evidence that either by education or circumstances she has been greatly wronged...How shall we prevent this destruction of life and health? By the true education and independence of woman.” (The Revolution, September 2, 1869)

“Child murderers,” wrote Sarah Norton, “practice their profession without let or hindrance, and open infant butcheries unquestioned...Is there no remedy for all this ante-natal child murder?...Perhaps there will come a time when...an unmarried mother will not be despised because of her motherhood...and when the right of the unborn to be born will not be denied or interfered with.” (Woodhull and Claflin’s Weekly, November 19, 1870)

Into the 20th century, feminists opposed abortion as an injustice towards women rather than seeing it as a means to their emancipation.

“The custom of procuring abortions has reached such appalling proportions in America as to be beyond belief...” wrote anarchist Emma Goldman in Mother Earth in 1911. “So great is the misery of the working classes that seventeen abortions are committed in every one hundred pregnancies.”

Whether for public relations purposes or her actual heartfelt feelings, Margaret Sanger, founder of the American Birth Control League (now Planned Parenthood), expressed opposition to abortion. She lamented the resort of poor people to “the most barbaric method” of family planning, “the killing of babies—infanticide—abortion.” (My Fight for Birth Control, 1931) Sanger told clients in her first birth control clinic that “abortion was the wrong way—no matter how early it was performed it was taking a life.” (An Autobiography, 1938)

A 1972 Presidential commission on population growth recommended legalizing abortion, with only a few voices dissenting. One of those dissenting was Graciela Olivarez, a Chicana active in civil rights and anti-poverty work. “The poor cry out for justice and equality,” she lamented, “and we respond with legalized abortion. I believe that in a society that permits the life of even one individual (born or unborn) to be dependent on whether that life is ‘wanted’ or not, all its citizens stand in danger...We do not have equal opportunities. Abortion is a cruel way out.”

In 1972, the National Organization for Women (NOW) expelled all its pro-life members to stifle dissent on the abortion issue. These pro-life feminists went on to form their own organization, Feminists For Life.