So many consider themselves pro-life and yet voted for Bush and will vote for McCain, which is a vote for the mass murdering known as war and the formalized murder that we call executions.

Now, can one be anti-abortion and a feminist? Yeah, I think so, as long as one doesn't have to stand before a bleeding, dying woman who's clutching a coat hanger. It's a hypothetical pairing, I think.

I just don’t see how this author is saying anything different then any other pro-choice person. Every pro-choice person I know will tell you that, in a perfect world, they would hope for abortions to be very rare. No one thinks abortions are a bunch of fun. Isn’t that even the Planned Parenthood motto? Safe and rare?

This lady might think abortion is wrong – but she sounds very pro-choice. I think the real evidence of that is the pro-choice movement certainly wouldn’t have her with all those liberal ideas of hers.

I meant to say it’s the pro-life movement who wouldn’t have her with all those liberal ideas (like early, non-surgical abortion and sex-ed).

... you can be both pro-choice and anti-abortion, which is the appropriate framework for feminists who would like to see the number of abortions decrease. If "pro-life" means taking the decision out of women's hands -- which is what it does indeed mean according to current conventional usage -- that is definitely not a feminist position.

Abortion is a wrong thing and should be eradicated.

If you think this, you're pro-life.

A thinking person would realize that the way to eradicate abortion is NOT to criminalize it. It involves, instead, the policies that Catherine Price lists -- such as freely available contraception, and support for mothers. We are helped by people like Baumgardner who are at last opening the discussion and not automatically assuming that pro-lifers are woman-hating, anti-contraception religious fanatics.

If those who call themselves "pro-choice" and those who call themselves "pro-life" can meet on a policy level -- what some of us call the "seamless garment" -- then the abortion controversy disappears. That would be a very, very good thing.

But I consider myself both pro-life and pro-choice.

When Baumgardner says in regard to "can you be both pro-life and a feminist":

JB: Yes. Certainly you cannot bomb an abortion clinic and be a feminist, nor can you prohibit another woman from accessing an abortion and call yourself a feminist.

it seems to me she is, by definition, putting herself into the "pro-choice" camp. In this world we live in saying you are "pro-life" is not just believing life begins at conception, it is also believing, because of that tenet others should be prohibited from having abortions. To be otherwise is to be supportive of individual women and their individual choices, i.e. pro-choice.

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.

A similar policy was practiced by Woodhull’s and Claflin’s Weekly, the paper published by free love advocates Victoria Woodhull and Tennessee Claflin. The Weekly constantly attacked Madame Restell, a well known New York City abortionist. 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 public and legal 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 not only opposed abortion, but recognized the social factors causing women to seek it: “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)

Even into the 20th century, feminists continued to oppose 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.”

Alice Paul, the author of the original Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) in 1923, opposed the later trend of linking it with abortion rights. She insisted that “abortion is the ultimate exploitation of women.”

Whether for public relations purposes or her actual heartfelt feelings, Margaret Sanger, founder of the American Birth Control League (now known as 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 voices expressing opposition to legalized abortion 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 in order to stifle dissent on the abortion issue. These pro-life feminists went on to form their own organization. Feminists For Life has chapters in the United States, Canada and New Zealand.