Political Quotes

“To continue with Women's History Month and to focus on pro-life women, I want you to imagine, Mr. Speaker, what it was like to be an American woman in the 1700s and 1800s. It surprises me to have to say this, but at that time women could not vote, we could not hold property, we could not inherit property if we were married, we could not control our own money or sit on a jury or testify on our own behalf. We needed somebody to testify for us if we were involved in a criminal case. We couldn't assemble or speak freely. We couldn't keep our children if we were divorced, and sometimes even when we were widowed. There was no such thing as marital rape, and no woman had ever graduated from college. Mr. Speaker, that almost sounds likes some Third World countries today, and yet that is the kind of an environment women faced in the 1700s and 1800s. Once women realized that we needed to have our rights reserved in the Constitution, other feminists stepped forward. One of those feminists was Elizabeth Cady Stanton. She was a pretty moxie woman, because at the time when women were pregnant--and you couldn't even say the term ``pregnant,'' I am not even you could say the term ``with child''--they were supposed to stay at home and not be seen until the child was born. What did Elizabeth Cady Stanton do? She shocked Victorian society, because she paraded through the streets showing the baby inside of her. And people were aghast.”