American women history Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1750 words - 1

American women history - Essay Example Taking the perspectives of Margaret Fuller, Horatio Storer and Caroll Smith-Rosenberg, who have expressed their views on gender differences, and the impact of abortion on the social order in 19th century America, this essay will chronicle the opposing views on women and how the women’s rights movement was borne out of such controversies. This essay will argue for the illegality and immorality of abortion while explaining how such a fact has been exploited to debase women and uplift men and how the woman’s movement has struggled to fight for gender balance. "Is it not enough," cries the sorrowful trader, "that you have done all you could to break up the national Union, and thus destroy the prosperity of our country, but now you must be trying to break up family union, to take my wife away from the cradle, and the kitchen hearth, to vote at polls, and preach from a pulpit! Of course, if she does such things, she cannot attend to those of her own sphere. She is happy enough as she is. She has more leisure than I have, every means of improvement, every indulgence. "No, but I know she is. She is too amiable to wish what would make me unhappy, and too judicious to wish to step beyond the sphere of her sex. I will never consent to have our peace disturbed by any such discussions.† â€Å"It having now been shown, directly and by temporary assumption, that the law and public sentiment, both by their theory and their practice, alike deny to unjustifiable abortion the imputation of crime, it remains for us to discuss this question abstractly, and to prove, not merely that they are wrong, but the offence is one of the deepest guilt, a crime SECOND TO NONE† (64) â€Å"Women... must develop their own sexual power within the home, control the frequency of intercourse, dominate the sexual act. Significantly, these women condemned abortion as bitterly as the AMA had.