Thursday Thought - Thursday, September 4, 2008
Women’s RightsDuring the past two weeks we have heard much about Women’s Rights from the Democrat and Republican Conventions. Most people do not realize that it was Evangelical Christians in America that promoted, defended and pressed for Equal Rights of Women in America. In particular the Wesleyan Church played an important roll in women’s rights in America. The Wesleyan Chapel in Seneca Falls, New York hosted the first Women’s Rights Convention in 1848, also known as the Seneca Falls Convention. In attendance and helping to organize this convention were Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Alice Paul. Susan B. Anthony did not attend that first convention but did attend later conventions and did speak at the church on the same issue.
What is interesting to me is that those who seem to refer to women’s rights the most know little about these women and what they stood for. They not only promoted equality of women but were active in fighting against slavery and for the unborn.
‘Although she is most well-known for helping women obtain the right to vote… Susan B. Anthony was an outspoken opponent of abortion, referring to it as ‘child murder.’ Anthony and other early women’s rights leaders were united in their opposition to abortion.
Women like Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Alice Paul would not even recognize the modern women’s movement, with its extreme dedication to abortion on-demand. The words of these early advocates for women and their unborn children show an unbridled compassion and recognition that abortion is not the key to women’s liberation.’ 1
In speaking of equal rights, let us remember that we need to stand for equal rights for ALL - from the womb to the deathbed. If we fail to protect the most innocent of humans, the unborn, then it endangers the physically, mentally or emotionally challenged, the elderly, the orphans, or anyone else deemed unwanted. It’s not to hard to say when life began. Psalm 139:13-16 says, ‘For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb. 14 I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well. My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place. When I was woven together in the depths of the earth, 16 your eyes saw my unformed body. All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be.’
I thank God for those who have fought for life - from our American Forefathers to those who continue to fight for it today! Let me encourage you this day to give God thanks for the life that He has given you. You are a wonderful creation! May God bless you this week! I look forward to seeing you in Church this Sunday!
Because of HIS Amazing Grace,
Myron D. Atkinson
Pastor
Penn Forest Worship Center
A Ministry of the Wesleyan Church
http://www.pfwc.net/
‘Abortion is the ultimate exploitation of women.’
-Alice Paul is the author of the original Equal Rights Amendment (1923)
‘When we consider that women are treated as property, it is degrading to women that we should treat our children as property to be disposed of as we see fit.’
- Elizabeth Cady Stanton in a letter to Julia Ward Howe, October 16, 1873. Recorded in Howe’s diary at Harvard University Library.