by Valerie Thompson
Cool women are pro-life! Serrin Foster, president of Feminists for Life of America, says the latest issue of The American Feminist proves her point.
“Remarkable Pro-Life Women III” is a special edition of the quarterly, which profiles 16 women: both those who are famous and others who are unheralded outside their own spheres.
“There are all of these amazing women who have made contributions in their fields and to society in general — who are pro-life,” Foster said in an interview.
“There's this myth that all the really cool women, all the really intelligent women, all the really accomplished women — all support abortion,” Foster told LifeNews.com Friday.
“These women celebrate womanhood, they celebrate life and we celebrate them.”
This third edition of “Remarkable Pro-Life Women” profiles a disability activist who testified against embryonic cloning before Congress, the first African American woman to graduate from Harvard Medical School, the woman who was Roe in Roe v. Wade, supermodel and successful businesswoman Kathy Ireland, actress and model Jennifer O'Neill, and 11 others.
The American Feminist honors women from medicine, politics, journalism, activism, academia, and show business. They include:
- Former Cover Girl spokeswoman Jennifer O'Neill, who is now spokeswoman for the Silent No More Awareness Campaign representing women who have had abortions.
- Activist and painter Joni Eareckson Tada, who was paralyzed by a diving accident in 1967 but told a Senate staff briefing in April she could not accept a cure based on embryonic cloning. “I do not want research benefiting me at the expense of other human life,” she said.
- Jill Stanek, who was a nurse in labor and delivery at a suburban Chicago hospital in 1996 when she discovered that the facility was performing therapeutic abortions and babies were being born alive and left to die. Her efforts were instrumental in Congress passing the Born Alive Infant Protection Act, which President George W. Bush signed in August 2002.
- Amy Laura Hall, assistant professor of theological ethics at Duke Divinity School at Duke University, who speaks out against the federal Human Genome Project to identify the 30,000 genes in human DNA, as part of a disturbing trend to craft the “perfect child.”
- U.S. Representative Melissa Hart, R-Pa., elected to Congress in 2000, who has sponsored or co-sponsored several measures calling for greater protection and assistance for women and children, born and unborn.
- Kathryn Jean Lopez, who is the editor of National Review Online.
- Norma McCorvey, who was the plaintiff in the Roe v. Wade decision and became pro-life in 1995.
- Kathy Ireland, who gained attention as the first “supermodel,” went on to acting and fitness videos and now heads her own company Kathy Ireland Worldwide. She is an outspoken advocate for the unborn and working mothers.
- U.S. Representative Illeana Ros-Lehtinen, R-Fla., who authored a bill to criminalize the transporting by adult men of young girls across state lines for abortions to conceal statutory rape. Elected in 1989, she was the first Hispanic woman and the first Cuban-American in Congress.
- Connie Binsfield, lieutenant governor of Michigan from 1991 to 1998. Together with former Gov. John Engler, she supported one of the first proposals to ban partial birth abortion. As a state legislator, Binsfield sponsored Michigan's first domestic violence legislation in 1978.
- Ella Grasso, who was governor of Connecticut, 1975-1981. The first woman elected governor without succeeding a husband, Grasso was an advocate for the poor, for women, and for the unborn. She died in 1981 of cancer.
- Breast cancer surgeon Angela Lanfranchi, who is a co-founder of the Breast Cancer Prevention Institute to inform women of the link between breast cancer and abortion.
- Surgeon Mildred Fay Jefferson, who served three terms as president of the National Right to Life Committee, which she helped found, and now serves as chair of the board. Jefferson was the first African American woman to graduate from Harvard Medical School.
- Frederica Mathewes-Green, who is the author of several books and frequent commentaries, and also is a commentator on National Public Radio and Orthodox Christian Radio.
- Susan Roylance, who is an international activist, particularly at the United Nations, for family and life issues.
- Carol Crossed, consistent life ethics activist, who is an advocate for life causes, using peaceful means, including civil disobedience.
Related web sites:
Feminists for Life – http://www.feministsforlife.org
(This article courtesy of Steven Ertelt and LifeNews.com. For more information or to subscribe go to LifeNews.com or email ertelt@lifenews.com.)