“The Bible and Woman’s Rights"

Elizabeth Cady Stanton published this article, titled, “The Bible and Woman’s Rights,” in the Boston newspaper The Index in 1876. Stanton was a leading figure in the women’s suffrage movement, having helped organize the famed Seneca Falls Convention of 1848 and author the Declaration of Rights and Sentiments, an important document in the history of the women’s rights movement. Here she writes in response to opponents of the suffrage movement who used the Bible to justify women’s subservient status. Instead of being frightened, she claimed, “women began with new zeal and discrimination to study the Bible for themselves, and in due time were fully able to rout their opponents with their own weapons.” Such convictions would help compel her to publish The Woman’s Bible nearly two decades later.