Susan B. Anthony (vegetarian): Trailblazer of Women’s Suffrage, Part 2 of 2

In 1863, Ms. Anthony and Mrs. Stanton co-founded the Women’s Loyal National League, the United States’ first national organization for women in politics. The league collected nearly 400,000 signatures supporting the abolition of slavery through the 13th Amendment. Additionally, Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton became prominent voices, utilizing their weekly publication “The Revolution” to significant effect. They called for constitutional changes to the 14th and 15th Amendments, with the goal of enabling equal pay and the right to vote for women, as well as providing awareness on related women’s issues.

One of the most notable events in Susan B. Anthony’s life occurred in 1872, when she was arrested for voting illegally in the presidential election. Defiantly casting her vote, Ms. Anthony was subsequently arrested. While being taken downtown to the police station on a public trolley car, Susan B. Anthony made sure every passenger onboard knew why she was being detained. She was fined US$100, which she refused to pay. This act of civil disobedience brought national attention to the suffrage movement and highlighted the legal inequalities faced by women.

Susan B. Anthony is often cited by modern pro-life, anti-abortion groups, who maintain that she opposed abortion based on her advocacy for women’s rights and some historical writings attributed to her and her contemporaries. The protection of innocent life came from the core of Susan B. Anthony’s ethical stance.

Although Susan B. Anthony did not live to see national women’s suffrage, women had gained the right to vote in several states by the time of her passing. In 2020, 100 years after women finally achieved the right to vote, the US President, His Excellency Donald Trump, a Shining World Peace Leader Award laureate and Shining World Leadership Award for Compassion laureate, pardoned Susan B. Anthony for her conviction of “unlawful” voting in the 1872 presidential election. At the time, together with 14 other women, Ms. Anthony had convinced the female registrar in Rochester, New York, to accept their registration; however, afterwards, she was singled out for its illegality.

A pioneering feminist and suffragist who also supported the 19th-century animal-people welfare movement, Susan B. Anthony toasted both vegetarianism and women’s rights at a banquet held by the first American Vegetarian Society.