Women & money & politics: can Susan & Emily work together?

Can Susan & Emily work together?

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. It is a rather ugly statue depicting busts of the three women looking very firm-jawed indeed, rising from a massive base. 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. And, true to the spirit of the women enshrined, some lively controversy. The National Political Congress of Black Women objected to the statue because it did not include a bust of black suffragist Sojourner Truth. Liberal feminists disputed the right of prolife Republican women to claim Susan B. Anthony for their own.

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 nonpartisan PAC dedicated to electing prolife women to high office), had praised Anthony for writing about abortion as an evil. 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." 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. We must reach the root of the evil...It is practiced by those whose inmost souls revolt from the dreadful deed....

Guilty? Yes. 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 will burden her conscience in life, it will burden her soul in death; but oh, thrice guilty is he who...drove her to the desperation which impelled her to the crime!

It is hard to see the above words as referring to anything but abortion. 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. Senate, U.S. House, governor) through early donations and support." It was clearly meant to challenge the liberal and supposedly broader-based Emily's List.

Women were slow to recognize the importance of money in election politics - perhaps because so few had control of any. In the initial struggle, they had relied on speaking, writing, demonstrations, and political acts like hunger strikes and poll challenges to achieve their goals. 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. 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.

The second wave of feminism, however, focused on equality. Women demanded entry into the professional schools, into the organizations where networking went on, and into fields (like engineering) previously reserved to men. Inevitably, they sought equality in political office. It soon became apparent - especially after the advent of television - that individual women candidates were hopelessly outmatched in funding. And so Emily's List was born.

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. (Emily is an acronym for "Early Money Is Like Yeast.") 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. 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. Hence, outstanding liberal but prolife women like former Congresswomen Lindy Boggs and Mary Rose Oakar could receive no support from Emily's List. (The National Women's Political Caucus, founded earlier to endorse liberals, insisted on the same exclusion.)

In challenging Emily's List, the Susan B. Anthony List has no political criteria other than that candidates be prolife. 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. Despite the claim that the Anthony List is nonpartisan and nonsectarian, all its winners were conservative Republicans.

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. 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. There is basic ground for agreement in that regard.

Anthony backers point to polls that show that a larger percentage of the voting population is closer to the prolife position than to the prochoice one. 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). 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. 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. If nothing else, hostility may be diminished.