rabbi wise on women's suffrage and the "pregnanacy boycott"
. . .
Carnegie Hall continues to be a focal point of the New York campaign, as the anti-suffrage rhetoric of last night was replaced by equally strong oratory in favor of suffrage this evening. Rabbi Stephen S. Wise said: “The cause of equal suffrage is one additional symbol of the history of a great movement of the awakening, the revolt, the uprising of women against centuries of wrong and injustice, for repression and suppression are wrong and injustice.”
Rabbi Wise also spoke to the issue of the current European war, and said: “I do not say that wars will end when women have the vote, but I will essay the role of the prophet in this one instance and say that there is not going to be an end to war before the women have the vote.”
He then went on to take his most radical stand yet, supporting a kind of “pregnancy boycott” by women if men continue to deny them the ballot:
I can conceive that the time will come when women will say, ‘Either give us a share in the government or else we will no longer be mothers. We will not give life to a child and a child to life; we will not bear sons unless we can assure ourselves that they will be permitted to live’… In the face of this great calamity of war, how can men say that government could be made worse by the participation of women?
. . .
http://feminist.org/blog/index.php/2014/10/31/today-in-herstory-one-million-new-york-women-want-suffrage/
= new reply since forum marked as read
