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September 24, 2007
This year at
Smith College, in the Connecticut River valley of western
Massachusetts, according to their website, a “world-class faculty of
scholars are fully engaged with their students’ intellectual
development, and an open curriculum encourages each student to explore
many fields of knowledge.”
At this nation’s
largest college for women, 24 course offerings explore what it means
to be a woman. The "Seminar on Gender and Social Change" sums it all
up: students explore “the intersection of race, class and sexual
orientation” as they are revealed in “case studies [to] include
feminist, lesbian and gay, right-wing, self help, anti-abortion, and
pro-choice movements.” In short, being a Smith kind of woman requires
a motherly embrace of abortion.
Whether it is
Smith College or Harvard or Columbia or any American university, young
women…and men…are being taught that abortion is the ultimate feminist
right that guarantees the ability of women to succeed in life. If you
are pro-woman, you are required to be pro-abortion.
Woe to any
student who might enter college holding a reverence for life. This is
the kind of “mistaken notion” that will cause the ire and ridicule of
professors to fall upon on her, doom her to Cs and lower on papers and
deny her access to fellowships and faculty positions. In most cases,
these women will survive. They will be converted.
Battered from
every side, our college daughters will eventually come to believe that
no self-respecting woman could ever claim to be pro-life. In a
curriculum closed to real academic inquiry, they will never hear the
truth about Elizabeth Cady Stanton who wrote feminist papers opposing
abortion and infanticide in The Revolution, a newspaper she
published with Susan B. Anthony.
Neither are
college professors likely to disclose Stanton’s letter to Julia Ward
Howe, the creator of Mother’s Day, where she wrote, “When we consider
that woman are treated as property, it is degrading to women that we
should treat our children as property to dispose of as we see fit.”
Elizabeth Cady
Stanton is not the only woman college professors choose to neglect.
Not surprisingly, their slate of “undesirables” includes all women who
embrace the life-giving capacity inherent in the very nature of being
a woman…Jane Addams, Susan B. Anthony, Pearl S. Buck, Dorothy Day…and
many others.
The curriculum at Smith College may be advertised as “open”, but not
that open.
Luckily, college
is not the only place where one can get an education. Thanks to
modern feminists who are reclaiming the definition of what it means to
be a woman., it is possible to join the company of real feminists,
both past and present, who affirm the value of every human life, no
matter how small or humble it may be.
Like those who
paved the way before them, Feminists for Life has refused to be
controlled by the politics of abortion. Believing in the strength of
women and the potential of every human life, FFL President Serrin
Foster has built a strong force of women reaching out to women with
information and support. We deserve better than abortion…we deserve
better choices.
This year
Feminists for Life has gathered a group of eloquent
women
speakers who tell it like it is…what it means to be a woman.
Traveling to university campuses around the country, they are truly
engaging the students’ intellectual development, presenting case
studies which illustrate the feminist case against abortion.
Finally, our
daughters entering college do not have to accept the status quo dished
out by college professors who want to indoctrinate with a pro-abortion
bias.
Feminists for Life has paved a way to truth. We can help.
Think of the
young women in your life who are in college. Tell them about
Feminists for Life and the full range of resources they offer to
college students: helping with abortion research projects,
providing pregnancy resources and leading campus workshops and
lectures.
Taking heart
from women who have paved the way, it’s time for freshmen entering
Smith College…and any other college…to teach their professors a thing
or two. Considering what it means to be a woman…when you are talking
about abortion…we deserve better.
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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.
Mattie Brinkerhoff,
The Revolution,
1869
September 24, 2004
End of Life as a Fairly Normal Person
See Archives
for past editorials.
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