Antoinette Brown Blackwell

Antoinette Brown Blackwell (20 May  1825 – 5 November 1921), was the first woman to be ordained as a mainstream Protestant minister in the United States. She was a well-versed public speaker on the paramount issues of her time, and distinguished herself from her contemporaries with her use of religious faith in her efforts to expand women's rights.

The Alleged Antagonism Between Growth and Reproduction (1874)

 * Growth and eating are antagonistic.
 * September 1874, Popular Science Monthly Vol. 5, Article: The Alleged Antagonism Between Growth and Reproduction, p. 607
 * Every action, physical or psychical, involves either integration or disintegration.
 * September 1874, Popular Science Monthly Vol. 5, Article: The Alleged Antagonism Between Growth and Reproduction, p. 607
 * There is no more antagonism between growth and reproduction than between growth and thought, growth and muscular activity, growth and breathing.
 * September 1874, Popular Science Monthly Vol. 5, Article: The Alleged Antagonism Between Growth and Reproduction, p. 607
 * The antagonism is only that of action and reaction, which are but two phases of the same process—opposing phases which exist everywhere, and which must exist, or action itself cease, and death reign universally.
 * September 1874, Popular Science Monthly Vol. 5, Article: The Alleged Antagonism Between Growth and Reproduction, p. 607
 * If it could be shown that men or women who are the parents of many children have thereby lost something of individual power, we might then be forced to admit that the greater cost related to the reproductive system in women must be at their personal expense, not at the expense of the nutriment which they assimilate and eliminate.
 * September 1874, Popular Science Monthly Vol. 5, Article: The Alleged Antagonism Between Growth and Reproduction, p. 607
 * Every action, physical or psychical, involves either integration or disintegration; every use of faculty belongs to the latter class. There is no more antagonism between growth and reproduction than between growth and thought, growth and muscular activity, growth and breathing.
 * September 1874, Popular Science Monthly Vol. 5, Article: The Alleged Antagonism Between Growth and Reproduction, p. 607
 * Other things being equal, the law seems to be directly reversed.
 * September 1874, Popular Science Monthly Vol. 5, Article: The Alleged Antagonism Between Growth and Reproduction, p. 608
 * One activity initiates another; the largest individual force maintains those more active adjustments, "simultaneous and successive," between the internal and external, which indicate the most vigorous life. We must look, then, to something more than a direct antagonism, between growth and reproduction, to account for unlikeness's of the sexes in plant or animal.
 * September 1874, Popular Science Monthly Vol. 5, Article: The Alleged Antagonism Between Growth and Reproduction, p. 608
 * Nature's sturdiest buds and her best-fed butterflies belong to this sex; her female spiders are large enough to eat up a score of her little males; some of her mother-fishes might parody the nursery-song, "I have a little husband no bigger than my thumb."
 * September 1874, Popular Science Monthly Vol. 5, Article: The Alleged Antagonism Between Growth and Reproduction, p. 608
 * If women normally have equal appropriative powers with men, the surplus nutriment not needed for their smaller physiques may be constitutionally handed over to reproduction. Natural selection has originated an admirably complete system of related provisions to this distinct end. This fact must lead us to the conclusion that the aggregate of feminine force is the full and fair equivalent of all masculine force, physical or psychical.
 * September 1874, Popular Science Monthly Vol. 5, Article: The Alleged Antagonism Between Growth and Reproduction, p. 608
 * Whenever man does not interfere, monogamy seems to be the general order of Nature with all higher organisms.
 * September 1874, Popular Science Monthly Vol. 5, Article: The Alleged Antagonism Between Growth and Reproduction, p. 608
 * The warlike duty of defense is also borne chiefly by males, and must often be an immense tax on the energies.
 * September 1874, Popular Science Monthly Vol. 5, Article: The Alleged Antagonism Between Growth and Reproduction, p. 608
 * In women, if there is a greater arrest of individual growth than in men, the difference begins in the fœtal life; their comparative weight and size at birth are the same as at maturity; and, if the former finish their growth earlier, it must be because relatively they grow more rapidly.
 * September 1874, Popular Science Monthly Vol. 5, Article: The Alleged Antagonism Between Growth and Reproduction, p. 609

Quotes about Blackwell

 * When Elizabeth Blackwell studied medicine and put up her sign in New York, she was regarded as fair game, and was called a "she doctor." The college that had admitted her closed its doors afterward against other women; and supposed they were shut out forever. But Dr. Blackwell was a woman of fine intellect, of great personal worth and a level head. How good it was that such a woman was the first doctor! She was well equipped by study at home and abroad, and prepared to contend with prejudice and every opposing thing.
 * Lucy Stone, "The Progress of Fifty Years" (1893)


 * Lucretia Mott has been a preacher for years; her right to do so is not questioned among Friends. But when Antoinette Brown felt that she was commanded to preach, and to arrest the progress of thousands that were on the road to hell; why, when she applied for ordination they acted as though they had rather the whole world should go to hell, than that Antoinette should be allowed to tell them how to keep out of it. She is now ordained over a parish in the state of New York, but when she meets on the Temperance platform the Rev. John Chambers, or your own Gen. Carey, they greet her with hisses. Theodore Parker said; “The acorn that the school-boy carries in his pocket and the squirrel stows in his cheek, has in it the possibility of an oak, able to withstand, for ages, the cold winter and the driving blast.” I have seen the acorn men and women, but never the perfect oak; all are but abortions. The young mother, when first the newborn babe nestles in her bosom, and a heretofore unknown love springs up in her heart, finds herself unprepared for this new relation in life, and she sends forth the child scarred and dwarfed by her own weakness and imbecility, as no stream can rise higher than its fountain.
 * Lucy Stone, "Disappointment is the Lot of Women" (October 17, 1855)