Victoria Woodhull
“Every woman knows if she were free, she would never bear an unwished-for child, nor think of murdering one before its birth.”
Woodhull was the nation’s first female presidential candidate, who ran under the banner of the Equal Rights Party in 1872. Wheeling, West Virginia Evening Standard, November 17, 1875
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“We are aware that many women attempt to excuse themselves for procuring abortions, upon the ground that it is not murder. But the fact of resort to so weak an argument only shows the more palpably that they fully realize the enormity of the crime. Is it not equally destroying the would-be future oak to crush the sprout before it pushes its head above the sod, as to cut down the sapling, or cut down the tree? Is it not equally to destroy life, to crush it in the very germ, and to take it when the germ has evolved to any given point in its line of development?”
Victoria Woodhull and Tennessee Claflin – Woodhull and Claflin’s Weekly, 20 June 1874