Karen Roe Quotes

Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton joined up in the late 1860s to fight for a woman’s right to vote. But they also lobbied for a woman’s right to education and divorce. Stanton, in particular, was an advocate of “voluntary motherhood,” the right of a wife to say no to her husband and choose periodic abstinence. Allowing a woman a voice in a couple’s relationship was empowering and groundbreaking in itself. She also believed in “the sacred right of a woman to her own person,” including the right to have fewer children.

Each sperm and each ovum is potential human life, she said, "part of the wonderful human cycle to which there's no beginning and no end." Faced with a choice between potential human life and a living woman, she added, "I'm concerned with the living generation.