Women & money & politics Pacs give women a choice: Agree with us on abortion, or get your money elsewhere
McCarthy, Abigail
ABIGAIL MCCARTHY WOMEN & MONEY & POLITICS Can Susan & Emily work together? On June 26, the statue depicting pioneer suffragists Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Lucretia Mott was...
...Television correspondent Lynn Sherr (of "20/20") was quoted in the Washington Post (June 26) as countering that claim, saying that she had read everything written by Susan B. Anthony and that "she's never said anything on the subject of abortion at all...
...Senate, U.S...
...We must reach the root of the evil...
...The Susan B. Anthony List was founded in 1993 for the express purpose of helping to "elect prolife women to high public office (that is, U.S...
...The second wave of feminism, however, focused on equality...
...Fiercely conservative Congresswoman Helen B. Chenoweth of Idaho, speaking to the press at the conference held by the Susan B. Anthony List (a so-called non-partisan PAC dedicated to electing pro-life women to high office), had praised Anthony for writing about abortion as an evil...
...It is a rather ugly statue depicting busts of the three women looking very firm-jawed indeed, rising from a massive base...
...In the few years since its founding, its supporters claim to have helped in the election of seven women to Congress and in unseating two Emily-backed office holders with their candidates...
...In the years since its inception, Emily's List is reported to be responsible for the election of five senators, thirty-four members of the House of Representatives, and two governors...
...Women were slow to recognize the importance of money in election politics-perhaps because so few had control of any...
...Liberal feminists disputed the right of prolife Republican women to claim Susan B. Anthony for their own...
...They altruistically formed coalitions around issues, such as protective legislation for women in the labor force and for children...
...They relied on persuasion and the power of the vote itself...
...Emily is an acronym for "Early Money Is Like Yeast...
...There is basic ground for agreement in that regard...
...And, true to the spirit of the women enshrined, some lively controversy...
...If nothing else, hostility may be diminished...
...Hence, outstanding liberal but prolife women like former Congresswomen Lindy Boggs and Mary Rose Oakar could receive no support from Emily's List...
...It is hard to see the above words as referring to anything but abortion...
...But ugly or not, it was commissioned years ago to commemorate women's long struggle for suffrage, and many of today's leading feminists joined the drive to rescue it from near-oblivion...
...There was a ceremony, of course, and press conferences...
...In challenging Emily's List, the Susan B. Anthony List has no political criteria other than that candidates be prolife...
...The National Political Congress of Black Women objected to the statue because it did not include a bust of black suffragist Sojourner Truth...
...House, governor) through early donations and support...
...It is practiced by those whose inmost souls revolt from the dreadful deed...
...On June 26, the statue depicting pioneer suffragists Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Lucretia Mott was exhumed from the bowels of the United States Capitol and installed in the Rotunda among statues of prominent Americans from every state...
...If both sides of the controversy can acknowledge the complexity, the prevailing opinion, and the worth of professional prevention, they may find things on which they can work together...
...But Sherr's statement is called into question by quotations from Anthony's The Revolution (July 8,1869), found in the Anthony List literature: We want prevention, not merely punishment...
...And so Emily's List was born...
...Women demanded entry into the professional schools, into the organizations where networking went on, and into fields (like engineering) previously reserved to men...
...No matter what the motive, love of ease, or a desire to save from suffering the unborn innocent, the woman is awfully guilty who commits the deed...
...It soon became apparent-especially after the advent of television-that individual women candidates were hopelessly outmatched in funding...
...It was clearly meant to challenge the liberal and supposedly broader-based Emily's List...
...Ostensibly, Emily's List was intended to support women with a liberal agenda, but it was hung up on the belief that has paralyzed the women's movement generally-that the right to abortion is liberating and must be upheld by any woman seeking office...
...After winning the vote, they tended to act on the long-held belief that the very presence of women in the process would purify politics...
...Despite the claim that the Anthony List is non-partisan and nonsectarian, all its winners were conservative Republicans...
...Guilty...
...The National Women's Political Caucus, founded earlier to endorse liberals, insisted on the same exclusion...
...Emily's List was founded by activist Ellen Malcolm to give a running start to women seeking office that would make them viable candidates, worthy of financial support from the more traditional sources...
...drove her to the desperation which impelled her to the crime...
...but oh, thrice guilty is he who...
...Anthony backers point to polls that show that a larger percentage of the voting population is closer to the pro-life position than to the prochoice one...
...In the initial struggle, they had relied on speaking, writing, demonstrations, and political acts like hunger strikes and poll challenges to achieve their goals...
...There is also a growing acceptance that prevention of abortion is not necessarily to be achieved by legislation and penalties but also by counseling and physical and financial help...
...Still, if the Susan B. Anthony List is true to one of its stated purposes-to initiate a healing process-it may help bring about a significant change in the current stalemate in the feminist movement...
...Inevitably, they sought equality in political office...
...It will burden her conscience in life, it will burden her soul in death...
...A 1996 postelection survey, which allowed a six-point gradation of opinion rather than a flat preference for either extreme, showed that 55 percent fell into the prolife position but acknowledged complexity (exceptions for rape, incest, and the life of the mother...
...The supporters of both the Anthony List and Emily's List believe that there should be more women in political office, that the present ratio of nine males to one female in the Congress, for example, constitutes a gross inequity...
Vol. 124 • August 1997 • No. 14
