Feminism, Abortion Rights and the Women’s March

http://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/20/opinion/feminism-abortion-rights-and-the-womens-march.html

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To the Editor:

As detailed in “Views on Abortion Strain Call to Unite at Women’s March” (news article, Jan. 19), organizers of the march will no longer embrace their original vision of “It is not our differences that divide us. It is our inability to recognize, accept and celebrate those differences.”

Many at the march on Saturday will have different views on the death penalty, the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and a host of other political issues. These are diversities that the organizers will and should accept and celebrate. However, all those marching will be required to “ante” into the pro-choice doctrine.

I wonder if the organizers realize that many of the early suffragists would have failed this litmus test. Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Alice Paul (who drafted an early Equal Rights Amendment) and Julia Ward Howe openly wrote criticisms about the practice that Stanton termed “infanticide.”

By making abortion a wedge issue, the organizers have allowed our differences to divide us. But even more important, they have alienated wonderful women who have done admirable social justice work on so many important issues of our day.

SUSAN KERIN

Rockville, Md.

To the Editor:

I am sorry that “anti-abortion” women feel alienated from feminism and do not feel welcome at the Women’s March. In answer to the question of whether these woman can be feminists: You absolutely can be a feminist and be morally opposed to abortion.

However, if being “pro-life” means that you are working to make abortion illegal again, for my daughter and my granddaughters and all American women, the answer is no, you are not a feminist. You are telling me that women have neither the right nor the legal standing to make their own medical decisions.

MELINDA HARDIN

Cooperstown, N.Y.

The writer is co-chairwoman of Family Planning of South Central New York.