But Gruenhagen polishes it with his refrain about the male sex drive being a force to exploit the ladies, since we are but passive vessels to be used and filled with the force that through the green fuse drove the flower--and that you can look it up on the innertubes:
He went on to say “I consider my comments about the fraud and lie to be objective truth. You can research it on the internet. The fact is the entire case was based on lie.
Secondly, one of the things I’d just like to say and its especially to the ladies in the room, OK? Ladies, the Supreme Court made this ruling. Their not infallible. If you remember right, the Supreme Court made a 7-2 ruling on slavery, with Dred Scott, in fact he was part of Minnesota here. And they said that black people were not fully human. They were wrong then. They were wrong in 1973. Let me just remind you, especially ladies, it was seven men that made abortion legal. Not seven women. Now what’s the significance of that? Men, a certain percentage have developed a perverted view of women and what abortion tells men is they can use women and lose them. OK? Use and lose them and run from their responsibility. Then on top of that we have the state showing up and paying for the sexual exploitation of women. Ladies, let’s put a stop to this. Let’s put a stop to sending a message to men that they can use you and leave you with the consequences and have the government pick up the tab for that.
(interruption for quieting the house)
The second thing is, the other thing I’d just like to say, if we look at taxpayer funded abortion, it unfairly discriminates against minorities. OK? Human life Alliance, right here in Minnesota, puts out excellent statistics about that. It’s the minority women that suffer the most consequences from the taxpayer funded abortions. and also suffer the consequences of the sexual exploitation of women in our society. Again I plead with you Ladies, help men support legislation that teaches men to accept their responsibility when conceiving with a woman. Don’t support government legislation and programs that tell men they can impregnate women and run away from their responsibilities. Please ladies, think about what’s been done to you in the last 40 to 50 years. Thank you Mr. Speaker.
David Hann's bill that would require parental consent for teens seeking treatment for drug issues, pregnancy and STDs--with a requirement that incest victims get a judge's consent rather than that of their abusers--has been widely reported.
But it's not just centrist-to-liberal editorial boards of outstate papers shaking their collective heads at Hann's misguided attempt to recover some golden age of parental control. The very conservative Fairmont Sentinel--a paper that has never endorsed a Democrat--isn't buying it.
We wonder what the real benefit would be - if any - if the Minnesota Legislature passes a law requiring parental consent before minors could seek treatment for pregnancy, sexually transmitted diseases or drug/alcohol abuse. Proponents say it seems obvious to them that parents should have a right to know about the medical condition of their child. But if the goal is to get children needed medical care, we're not sure the proposed law helps. . . .
Current law, which has been on the books for 40 years, lets minors see doctors without parental knowledge. Parents have no access to their children's medical records.
It seems to us that the proposed law is a backwards way to go about something entirely different:?Instilling a certain set of values in young people to get them to refrain from certain activities. Parents have every right and opportunity to instruct their children any way they wish. Whether kids follow the advice is another matter. Whether kids - young adults, really, given the circumstances - have access to unfettered medical care should not be held over them.
Like the anti-ag whistleblowers bill, Hann's proposal isn't gaining support anywhere. Legislators like Hann, Magnus and Hamilton should focus on more important budget and revenue issues and leave these sorts of unlikely bills in the dustbin.
Minnesota's conservative representative Michele Bachmann, for instance, cited Sanger as "a woman who promoted eugenics" in a 2008 speech on the House floor ( see .52-1.00 in this YouTube).
Imagine my surprise, then, to stumble across a pair of YouTube in which Ohio's own Michele, Rep. Jean Schmidt, and our own resident thimblewit, salute American feminist, socialist, free-love advocate, stockbroker and eugenics pioneer, Victoria Woodhull, the first American woman to run for President?
Such are the acrobatics of those using Women's History Month to play politics, rather than seek a deeper understanding of women's history. Here's Bachmann including Woodhull in a litany of foremothers whose names she can barely pronounce:
Schmidt admits that she didn't learn much about women's history when she majored in history in college. Her remarks on Woodhull:
Perhaps Bachmann, Schmidt and Feminists for Life--which appears to be the chief source for the quote-out-of-context approach to women's history, do indeed need to know more about Victoria Woodhull. I first ran across her while majoring in American Studies at Hamline, and later had the fortunate opportunity to romp through her writings when I was employed by the Library Company of Philadelphia (the library Ben Franklin founded), which includes Woodhull & Claflin's Weekly in its holdings, among other Woodhull titles.
Woodhull is a complex figure, worthy of study. However, I suspect that if Schmidt and Bachmann studied her life--especially her writings about reproductive rights--a bit more carefully, they'd talk about her a lot less on the floor of the U.S. House Representatives, regardless of which month it might be. There's also the little matter of Woodhull being the first to publish the Communist Manifesto in the United States, as well as her early career with her sister as a spiritualist healer.
Like Sanger, Woodhull opposed abortion. Like Sanger, Woodhull promoted eugenics.
As Perry's collection of essays and speeches by the latter points out, Woodhull hoped to be thought a pioneering promoter of eugenics. Following the now-notorious Buck v. Bell decision by the Supreme Court upholding the constitutionality of forced sterilization laws in 1927, Woodhull told a reporter for the Associated Press:
Mrs. Martin [Woodhull had remarried in England], who wrote and lectured for thirty years on eugenics, remarked that she was pleased to read that the Virginia Eugenics law had succeeded in establishing the right to sterilize the feeble-minded.*
"I advocated that fifty years ago in my book, Marriage of the Unfit." she said. "I am also glad that parents are now beginning to instruct their adolescent children in the facts of life. . . . " (Perry, Lady Eugenist, p. 9)
Perry explains that he came across the AP report, published in the New York Times, while looking at popular coverage of the eugenics movement for an earlier book that he published about Sanger. Intrigued, but skeptical of the self-promoting Woodhull, he later searched her early writings to so ee if she had been straight with the AP reporter:
I wondered at the time if she was being honest or just playing her usual "I was the first woman to..." game. I have since discovered she was right (Perry, p. 9)
Whether one sides with Perry's analysis or not, his book reproduces the full-text of relevant texts by Woodhull, and after reading them, I'm come to the conclusion that anyone damning Sanger for her support of eugenic principles ought to do the same for Woodhull.
Indeed, given that she advocated extreme intrusion by the state into family life and individual reproductive rights--and held racist notions about "fitness"--anyone seeking a dead "pro-life" ally in the pioneering feminist should probably apologize to the House of Representatives for digging up Woodhull's corpse.
Let's look at some choice tidbits from the body of her writings, readily accessible in Perry's anthology, available online as a pdf. To prove Woodhull's anti-choice position, Schmidt reads off a passage from the Dec. 24, 1870 Woodhull and Claflin's Weekly,
"The rights of
children as individuals begin while yet they remain the foetus."
Perry's anthology reprints "Children--Their Right and Privileges," the text of a September 1871 speech by Woodhull, printed in the October 7, 1871 Woodhull and Claflin's Weekly. This document includes a sentence strikingly similar to the one Schmidt recited on the House floor. Woodhull said:
The rights of
children, then, as individuals, begin while yet they are in foetal life.( Perry, p.33)
In the speech, first delivered to a Spiritualist convention, Woodhull also said:
So also is abortion a practice which spreads damnation world-wide. Not so much, perhaps, in those case where it is accomplished, but in those much more numerous cases where it is desired and attempted, but not reached. When a woman becomes conscious that she is pregnant, and a desire come up in her heart to shirk the duties it involves, that moment the foetal life is the unloved, the unwished child. Is it to be wondered that there are so many undutiful children--so many who instinctively feel that hey are "encumbrances" rather than the beautiful necessities of the home? (Perry, p. 39)
Given this notion of maternal influences in utero, it's not surprising that Woodhull strongly believed in teaching sex education; she also believed that women should be in charge of determining when they should get pregnant, and do so only when certain of their fitness for parenthood and the fitness of their male partner.
However, in the same speech, she advocated the "right" of children to be reared to fulfill their duties as citizens, and this "right" was more important than that of parents:
The fact that children are born and grown to be citizens, and not to remain children of the parents simply, is overlooked.
. . .For ourselves we make the distinction assertion that we are thoroughly convinced that fully one half the whole number of children now living between the ages of ten and fifteen, would have been in a superior condition--physically, mentally, and morally--to what they are, had they been early entrusted to the care of the proper kind of industrial institutions. (Perry, p. 40)
This is not the last time Woodhull would recommendation state intrusion in the life of individuals. Perry's anthology includes her 1890 essay, "Humanitarian Government," an exercise in extreme nanny-statism.
In her 1891 essay, "The Rapid Multiplication of the Unfit," Woodhull advocates even more interference with marriage and child-bearing. "Unfitness" for whites is largely defined by class and disability, while other races are "less developed" by definition.
All of the statements, opinions, and views expressed on this site by Sally Jo Sorensen are solely her own, save when she attributes them to other sources.
The opinions, statements, and views of contributing writers are their own.
Sorensen, editor and proprietor of Bluestem Prairie, served as a New Media training and strategy consultant for the Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party from October 2009 through mid-April 2010. She now serves clients in the business and nonprofit sectors.
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