Feminists for Life President Serrin Foster's speech, “The Feminist Case Against Abortion” has been included in the anthology Women's Rights edited by Jennifer Hurley. Women's Rights is one volume in a series, “Great Speeches in History.” Other volumes include “The Founding of America,” “The Great Depression,” and “Human Rights.” The series will be distributed to high school and public libraries across the country.
Speeches on women's rights from twenty-one women in history were chosen for the anthology, including pioneers of the suffragist movement Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton; “second wave” women's rights advocates Betty Friedan, Gloria Steinem and Sarah Weddington; and contemporary feminists former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, Kate Michelman, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, and Serrin Foster.
Ms. Foster is widely recognized as a national spokesperson for pro-life feminism. During the 1996 Republican National Convention, Ms. Foster joined fellow pro-life advocates Ambassador Alan Keyes and USA Today special correspondent Linda Chavez in an abortion debate with Gov. William Weld of Massachusetts and Sen. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania at an event hosted by the Creative Coalition. At the invitation of Washington Post readers, Ms. Foster was interviewed on-line during the 2000 Democratic National Convention.
In 2000, at the invitation of former Sen. Alan K. Simpson, Ms. Foster participated in a panel discussion on abortion at the Harvard University Kennedy School of Government. She was joined by Dr. Bernard Nathanson, co-founder of the National Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League (NARAL) and former abortion provider who has since become a pro-life activist, Gloria Feldt, president of Planned Parenthood, the largest abortion provider in the country, and Bill Baird, director of the Pro-Choice League.
Some of Ms. Foster's national media appearances include CNN International's discussion in 2001 of the abortion ship “Aurora,” opposite an attorney representing the Feminist Majority, and C-SPAN's “The Politics of Abortion,” in 1996 with author Naomi Wolf and former Treasurer of the United States Bay Buchanan.
Internationally, Ms. Foster presented “The Feminist Case Against Abortion,” in 2000 at the annual Life Conference held at the Parliament Buildings at Stormont, Northern Ireland. Ms. Foster was a featured speaker in 1998 at the first-ever-joint pro-life and pro-choice conference in Dublin, Ireland. Entitled “5,000 Too Many,” a reference to the number of women who leave Ireland for abortions in the United Kingdom each year.
Ms. Foster also spoke at a U.S. Department of State “Bringing Cairo Home” conference in 1995 on the parallels between the needs of women in developing countries and the obstacles faced by the early American feminists.
Like the early American feminists who opposed abortion, Feminists for Life works to systematically eliminate the root causes that drive women to abortion by facilitating practical solutions.
Recognizing the critical need for practical resources for pregnant and parenting students, Feminists for Life has launched a nationwide initiative to ensure that college students have the resources they need to make life-affirming choices. Through its College Outreach Program, FFL provides pregnancy resource kits to college health clinics, students, advisors and counselors across the country, and leads on-campus discussions on developing practical resources for pregnant and parenting students on college campuses. Ms. Foster has lectured and moderated Pregnancy Resource Forums at top colleges across America, including Harvard, Stanford, Notre Dame, Texas A & M, and Georgetown, and internationally at Oxford and Cambridge universities, among others.
For more information about FFL's College Outreach Program, to inquire about speaker availability or to arrange an interview, please contact the national office: Feminists for Life of America, 733 15th St. NW, Suite 1100, Washington, DC 20005, (202) 737-3352, info@feministsforlife.org.
(This article courtesy of Steven Ertelt and the Pro-Life Infonet email newsletter. For more information or to subscribe go to www.prolifeinfo.org or email infonet@prolifeinfo.org.)