Alumna discusses nonprofit’s pro-life stance, election

Marjorie Dannenfelser, Trinity ’88, is the president of the Susan B. Anthony List, a nonprofit that seeks to elect pro-life politicians. The Chronicle’s Neelesh Moorthy spoke with Dannenfelser to discuss her shift in opinions from pro-choice to pro-life at Duke and her opinions on the current election.

The Chronicle: What is the Susan B. Anthony List?

Marjorie Dannenfelser: Our mission is to elect mainly women who will enact laws that will save lives, and from the perspective I come from that means women are advocates for pro-life laws. In my view, that is the natural and feminist origin of women’s rights. Elections are the central missing piece of the pro-life movement. That is the foundation for the forming of legislation, and at the same time as forming legislation you have to elect these people.

There was a group of women that was Feminists for Life that had the idea [for the SBAL] first, and because I had the same idea, we found each other. It was a very diverse group of women, some Quakers, some Democrats, there was me, a Republican, so a diverse group of women came together at the same time to launch a new idea about what women’s rights and abortion activism meant.

TC: How is the pro-life viewpoint related to feminism?

MD: If you really look at the foundations of feminism, Susan B. Anthony, Victoria Woodhull, had a unanimous opinion on what this was. Abortion was not a word then, but it was very clear what they thought. There are other scholars that disagree with me, but it is very difficult to look at the actual words of these women and deal with the fact of what they said. Susan B. Anthony said that, referring to the act of abortion, the act would ‘burden a women’s conscience and burden her soul in death.’

Her newspaper, The Revolution, was very hard to sustain financially, but she was very adamant that she would not take advertising from the one group of women who really wanted to advertise in her paper, and that was women, especially in New York, who wanted to advertise Restellism [, an old term for abortion].

It’s exploitation because when a woman finds herself in a sexual relationship that she finds herself unequal in, and then the guy decides that he doesn’t want any part of the child that comes of that relationship, he can walk away. She might have a moral compunction about doing away with that child, but he can walk away. He can always cleanse his hands of that relationship, and she cannot. She’s left to deal with that situation.

If the woman is the one who wants to get rid of the baby, however, it’s not exploitation. When I used to be pro-choice, I would have done the same thing. My thoughts were at that time ‘I’m getting rid of a problem.’ I think that’s what a lot of women in that situation think, so I guess in that instance it’s not exploitation. But what is happening is science has improved, and time has gone on testing the theories of Roe v. Wade that it’s not as simple as we hoped. We hoped it would be a simple procedure that would liberate ourselves from the consequences of what happened, but it’s not that simple. One of the reasons is ultrasound. When a woman witnessed what is actually happening to the person we claim has been harmed, and with ultrasound and pictures of what is happening to the unborn child, we’re looking at that and we’re thinking twice. For me, that’s where it changed.

There’s only one reason why I’d ever be against abortion, and that’s because there are two lives involved. There are two people to consider in every abortion. We’re not talking about a person and their appendix. We’re talking about two people.

TC: There was a law in North Carolina that required abortion providers to show an ultrasound to pregnant women seeking an abortion, but it was struck down by an appeals court for violating doctors’ free-speech rights. Do you support such a law?

MD: If an ultrasound is going to happen, the women should be given that information. It’s the only test that somehow has a different test for whether you show it to the women. Why should we as women be protected from that information? It’s okay if you don’t want to look at it. You can say you don’t want to look at it, but I think it’s one of the most important pieces of information they could possibly have. Why in this one situation would we not insist that the information be provided, especially if it involves the life of another person?

TC: I know that you were previously the pro-choice chair of Duke College Republicans at Duke. What experiences at Duke led you to change yourstance?

MD: More important than anything else was philosophy. I could not escape the most vacuous arguments that I was making myself. ‘My body, my choice’ simply doesn’t last very long under examination. The political piece was out on the quad. There was no pro-life group. I was changing my opinion, my views were evolving, and I came out and spoke my piece. I was absolutely and completely shouted down by the group, but I thought it was important to say what I thought. I started out pre-med as well, and while it turned out being a doctor wasn’t for me, the scientific method—evaluating the evidence—was also impactful.

The truth is my opinion evolved over time. I think it was just the fruit of intensified argument and conversation. It was also prayer—it was a time when faith was really important to me as well. I thought at that time that it was just an intellectual journey for me, but it was probably also spiritual.

TC: How has the fact you have gone through this transition affected how you campaign for pro-life causes?

MD: I thought I was the best advocate for the pro-choice standpoint, so I gave a very strong libertarian argument and what I thought was a very strong pro-choice argument, knowing on a non-intellectual side that I would have had an abortion in an instant, that I had no moral compunction against it.

Knowing those things, if you change your mind, I can tell people I disagree with that I share their views. That is the essence of a liberal arts education, and that’s what I got from Duke. What I got from Duke is the ability to argue with people I disagree with, and because I have had this pro-choice stance myself, it makes it very real and it pushes me to have a conversation that embraces different premises.

TC: In one of the Republican debates, it was mentioned that Planned Parenthood has a lot of useful functions beneficial to women’s health. Are you in favor of defunding them, given those other functions they serve?

MD: As long as they make abortion the central component of their enterprise, I’m in favor of defunding them. If they gave up abortion, we would have no fight on our hands. The ratio of community health centers that do far more than any particular Planned Parenthood clinic is around 30-to-1. They are far more accessible and they provide far more services to women, despite the public relations Planned Parenthood puts out. This is well-documented not just by us but also by Congressional Quarterly. What Planned Parenthood has is political leverage. In a second [I would defund them], because all that money would then go to those community centers that do far more for women, because it actually serves women’s health.

TC: What presidential candidate in your mind has the best position on abortion?

MD: Our position is to improve every single candidate. Our biggest concern has been and still is to get every single candidate committed to certain deliverables when they become president—defunding Planned Parenthood, the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Act, nominating a justice for the Supreme Court who is sane and has a fielty to the Constitution. We’ve never had a Republican field like we do currently. Trump is the very last choice and has been the very last choice, but he has satisfied the minimum standards. If you really think that this abortion issue is about 4,000 lives every single day, what do you do? Who do you choose? If it comes down to Trump versus Clinton, we’ve got to really look at that question.