A Quaker teacher, Dr. Alice Bunker Stockham (1833-1912) earned obstetrics and gynecology degrees from two medical colleges, one specializing in homeopathy, and one in “eclectic” medicine (herbalism). While operating a clinic and a free kindergarten, Stockham embraced suffrage and the nonviolent philosophies of iconic writers like Leo Tolstoy. Tolstoy Stockham’s Tokology (Greek for “obstetrics”), which […]
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ELIZABETH CADY STANTON: FEMINIST, WIFE AND MOTHER OF SEVEN When her seventh child, Henry, was born in 1859, early feminist Elizabeth Cady Stanton raised a flag in front of her home–scandalizing the Seneca Falls, N.Y., community by her public celebration of motherhood. The mid-19th century was a time when pregnancy and birth were still surrounded
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Lecturer and Spiritualist minister Laura Cuppy Smith (fl. 1870s) emigrated from Britain to the U.S. at fourteen. When still a young mother, she was widowed by suicide. Nearly destitute, Smith moved with her children to San Francisco, where she organized numerous suffrage societies and helped present the first women’s suffrage petition to the California legislature.
Contemporary feminists bravely challenge a belief that causes so much violence against women — the notion that woman are the property of men, expressed for centuries in the common-law doctrine that “man and wife are one, and that one, the husband.” The feminist movement has begun to create authentic choices for breaking the cycle of
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