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"I protest against the custom which compels women to give the control of their maternal functions over to anybody."
Said the glorious, Victoria Woodhull in 1871 in her speech announcing herself as President! Yup. She was the first woman to run in 1872 and spent Election day in jail thanks to the Comstock Law. If this sounds at all familiar, it's because this archaic 1870s Law has never been completely repealed and is being used RIGHT NOW - TODAY - 2024 - by anti-abortionists fighting the mailing of the birth control pill Mifepristone.
Victoria Woodhull is one of the chapters in my forthcoming Young Adult Women's History book. The working title is "Five Centuries of Trailblazing American Women Political Activists".
I'd prefer to call it Badass Bitches Who Made Your Life Better...
Here's a snippet ...
By the time she ran for President, she had figured out how to use her immeasurable power as a beautiful, sexy woman. She tried to use it for good - helping and empowering women. Like opening the first female stock brokerage firm on Wall Street, which was a very big deal. And publishing her own weekly newspaper (the social media of the day) in which she wrote about and promoted many of her “radical” causes such as women’s rights, free love, and her run for president. All of this landed her in jail - many times, including and significantly on Election Day when she exposed the adulterous affair of Henry Ward Beecher, the most powerful, popular and hypocritical preacher of the day.
Unfortunately, there was a law on the books banning the publishing and mailing of obscene and illicit materials, including birth control. (see chapter on Margaret Sangar). The Comstock Act as it was known, was named after Anthony Comstock, a “vice reformer”. This guy was a religious zealot who made it his mission to stop any spread of information having anything to do with sex and/or what he considered “obscene”. So he had Victoria and her sister Tennessee arrested and jailed for weeks for printing the “obscene” article on Beecher.
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