WOMAN'S STRUGGLE FOR FREEDOM
Behind all customs of whatever nature; behind all social unrest,
behind all movements, behind all revolutions, are great driving
forces, which in their action and reaction upon conditions, give
character to civilization. If, in seeking to discover the source of a
custom, of a movement or of a revolution, we stop at surface
conditions, we shall never discern more than a superficial aspect of
the underlying truth.
This is the error into which the historian has almost universally
fallen. It is also a common error among sociologists. It is the
fashion nowadays, for instance, to explain all social unrest in terms
of economic conditions. This is a valuable working theory and has done
much to awaken men to their injustice toward one another, but it
ignores the forces within humanity which drive it to revolt. It is
these forces, rather than the conditions upon which they react, that
are the important factors. Conditions change, but the animating force
goes on forever.
So, too, with woman's struggle for emancipation. Women in all lands
and all ages have instinctively desired family limitation. Usually
this desire has been laid to economic pressure. Frequently the
pressure has existed, but the driving force behind woman's aspiration
_toward freedom_ has lain deeper. It has asserted itself among the
rich and among the poor, among the intelligent and the unintelligent.
It has been manifested in such horrors as infanticide, child
abandonment and abortion.
The only term sufficiently comprehensive to define this motive power
of woman's nature is the _feminine spirit_. That spirit manifests
itself most frequently in motherhood, but it is greater than
maternity. Woman herself, all that she is, all that she has ever been,
all that she may be, is but the outworking of this inner spiritual
urge. Given free play, this supreme law of her nature asserts itself
in beneficent ways; interfered with, it becomes destructive. Only when
we understand this can we comprehend the efforts of the feminine
spirit to liberate itself.
When the outworking of this force within her is hampered by the
bearing and the care of too many children, woman rebels. Hence it is
that, from time immemorial, she has sought some form of family
limitation. When she has not employed such measures consciously, she
has done so instinctively. Where laws, customs and religious
restrictions do not prevent, she has recourse to contraceptives.
Otherwise, she resorts to child abandonment, abortion and infanticide,
or resigns herself hopelessly to enforced maternity.
These violent means of freeing herself from the chains of her own
reproductivity have been most in evidence where economic conditions
have made the care of children even more of a burden than it would
otherwise have been. But, whether in the luxurious home of the
Athenian, the poverty-ridden dwelling of the Chinese, or the crude hut
of the primitive Australian savage, the woman whose development has
been interfered with by the bearing and rearing of children has tried
desperately, frantically, too often in vain, to take and hold her
freedom.
Individual men have sometimes acquiesced in these violent measures,
but in the mass they have opposed. By law, by religious canons, by
public opinion, by penalties ranging all the way from ostracism to
beheading, they have sought to crush this effort. Neither threat of
hell nor the infliction of physical punishment has availed. Women have
deceived and dared, resisted and defied the power of church and state.
Quietly, desperately, consciously, they have marched to the gates of
death to gain the liberty which the feminine spirit has desired.
In savage life as well as in barbarism and civilization has woman's
instinctive urge to freedom and a wider development asserted itself in
an effort, successful or otherwise, to curtail her family.
"The custom of infanticide prevails or has prevailed," says Westermark
in his monumental work, _The Origin and Development of the Moral
Idea_, "not only in the savage world but among the semi-civilized and
civilized races."
With the savage mother, family limitation ran largely to infanticide,
although that practice was frequently accompanied by abortion as a
tribal means. As McLennan says in his "Studies in Ancient History,"
infanticide was formerly very common among the savages of New Zealand,
and "it was generally perpetrated by the mother." He notes much the
same state of affairs among the primitive Australians, except that
abortion was _also_ frequently employed. In numerous North American
Indian tribes, he says, infanticide and abortion were not uncommon,
and the Indians of Central America were found by him "to have gone to
extremes in the use of abortives."
When a traveller reproached the women of one of the South American
Indian tribes for the practice of infanticide, McLennan says he was
met by the retort, "Men have no business to meddle with women's
affairs."
McLennan ventures the opinion that the practice of abortion so widely
noted among Indians in the Western Hemisphere, "must have supervened
on a practice of infanticide."
Similar practices have been found to prevail wherever historians have
dug deep into the life of savage people. Infanticide, at least, was
practiced by African tribes, by the primitive peoples of Japan, India
and Western Europe, as well as in China, and in early Greece and Rome.
The ancient Hebrews are sometimes pointed out as the one possible
exception to this practice, because the Mosaic law, as it has come
down to us, is silent upon the subject. Westermark is of the opinion
that it "hardly occurred among the Hebrews in historic times. But we
have reason to believe that at an earlier period, among them, as among
other branches of the Semitic race, child murder was frequently
practiced as a sacrificial rite."
Westermark found that "the murder of female infants, whether by the
direct employment of homicidal means, or exposure to privation and
neglect, has for ages been a common practice or even a genuine custom
among various Hindu castes."
Still further light is shed upon the real sources of the practice, as
well as upon the improvement of the status of woman through the
practice, by an English student of conditions in India. Captain S.
Charles MacPherson, of the Madras Army, in the Journal of the Royal
Asiatic Society for 1852, said: "I can here but very briefly advert to
the customs and feelings which the practice of infanticide (among the
Khonds of Orissa) alternately springs from and produces. The influence
and privileges of women are exceedingly great among the Khonds, and
are, I believe, greatest among the tribes which practice infanticide.
Their opinions have great weight in all public and private affairs;
their direct participation is often considered essential in the
former."
If infanticide did not spring from a desire within the woman herself,
from a desire stronger than motherhood, would it prevail where women
enjoy an influence equal to that of men? And does not the fact that
the women in question do enjoy such influence, point unmistakably to
the motive behind the practice?
Infanticide did not go out of fashion with the advance from savagery
to barbarism and civilization. Rather, it became, as in Greece and
Rome, a recognized custom with advocates among leaders of thought and
action.
So did abortion, which some authorities regard as a development
springing from infanticide and tending to supersede it as a means of
getting rid of undesired children.
As progress is made toward civilization, infanticide, then, actually
increased. This tendency was noted by Westermark, who also calls
attention to the conclusions of Fison and Howitt (in Kamilaroi and
Kurnai). "Mr. Fison who has lived for a long time among uncivilized
races," says Westermark, "thinks it will be found that infanticide is
far less common among the lower savages than among the more advanced
tribes."
Following this same tendency into civilized countries, we find
infanticide either advocated by philosophers and authorized by law, as
in Greece and Rome, or widely practiced in spite of the law, civil and
ecclesiastical.
The status of infanticide as an established, legalized custom in
Greece, is well summed up by Westermark, who says: "The exposure of
deformed or sickly infants was undoubtedly an ancient custom in
Greece; in Sparta, at least, it was enjoined by law. It was also
approved of by the most enlightened among the Greek philosophers.
Plato condemns all those children who are imperfect in limbs as well
as those who are born of depraved citizens."
Aristotle, who believed that the state should fix the number of
children each married pair should have, has this to say in _Politics_,
Book VII, Chapter V:
"With respect to the exposing and nurturing of children, let it be a
law that nothing mutilated shall be nurtured. And in order to avoid
having too great a number of children, if it be not permitted by the
laws of the country to expose them, it is then requisite to define how
many a man may have; and if any have more than the prescribed number,
some means must be adopted that the fruit be destroyed in the womb of
the mother before sense and life are generated in it."
Aristotle was a conscious advocate of family limitation even if
attained by violent means. "It is necessary," he says, "to take care
that the increase of the people should not exceed a certain number in
order to avoid poverty and its concomitants, sedition and other
evils."
In Athens, while the citizen wives were unable to throw off the
restrictions of the laws which kept them at home, the great number of
_hetera_, or stranger women, were the glory of the "Golden Age." The
homes of these women who were free from the burden of too many
children became the gathering places of philosophers, poets, sculptors
and statesmen. The _hetera_ were their companions, their inspiration
and their teachers. Aspasia, one of the greatest women of antiquity,
was such an emancipated individuality. True to the urge of the
feminine spirit, she, like Sappho, the poetess of Lesbia, sought to
arouse the Greek wives to the expression of their individual selves.
One writer says of her efforts: "This woman determined to do her
utmost to elevate her sex. The one method of culture open to women at
that time was poetry. There was no other form of literature, and
accordingly she systematically trained her pupils to be poets, and to
weave into the verse the noblest maxims of the intellect and the
deepest emotions of the heart. Young pupils with richly endowed minds
flocked to her from all countries and formed a kind of Woman's
College.
"There can be no doubt that these young women were impelled to seek
the society of Sappho from disgust with the low drudgery and
monotonous routine to which woman's life was sacrificed, and they were
anxious to rise to something nobler and better."
Can there be any doubt that the unfortunate "citizen wives" of Athens,
bound by law to their homes, envied the brilliant careers of the
"stranger women," and sought all possible means of freedom? And can
there be any doubt that they acquiesced in the practice of infanticide
as a means to that end? Otherwise, how could the custom of destroying
infants have been so thoroughly embedded in the jurisprudence, the
thought and the very core of Athenian civilization?
As to the Spartan women, Aristotle says that they ruled their husbands
and owned two-fifths of the land. Surely, had they not approved of
infanticide for some very strong reasons of their own, they would have
abolished it.
Athens and Sparta must be regarded as giving very strong indications
that the Grecian women not only approved of family limitation by the
destruction of unwanted children, but that at least part of their
motive was personal freedom.
In Rome, an avowedly militaristic nation, living by conquest of weaker
states, all sound children were saved. But the weakly or deformed were
drowned. Says Seneca: "We destroy monstrous births, and we also drown
our children if they are born weakly or unnaturally formed." Wives of
Romans, however, were relieved of much of the drudgery of child
rearing by the slaves which Rome took by the thousands and brought
home. Thus they were free to attain an advanced position and to become
the advisors of their husbands in politics, making and unmaking
political careers.
When we come to look into the proverbial infanticide of the Chinese,
we find the same positive indications that it grew out of the
instinctive purpose of woman to free herself from the bondage of too
great reproductivity.
"In the poorest districts of China," says Westermark, "female infants
are often destroyed by their parents immediately after their birth,
chiefly on account of poverty. Though disapproved of by educated
Chinese, the practice is treated with forbearance or indifference by
the man of the people and is acquiesced in by the mandarins."
"When seriously appealed to on the subject," says the Rev. J.
Doolittle in _Social Life of the Chinese_, "though all deprecate it as
contrary to the dictates of reason and the instincts of nature, many
are ready boldly to apologize for it and declare it to be necessary,
especially in the families of the excessively poor."
Here again the wide prevalence of the custom is the first and best
proof that women are driven by some great pressure within themselves
to accede to it. If further proof were necessary, it is afforded by
the testimony of Occidentals who have lived in China, that Chinese
midwives are extremely skillful in producing early abortion. Abortions
are not performed without the consent and usually only at the demand
of the woman.
In China, as in India, the religions of the country condemned, even as
they to-day condemn, infanticide. Both foreign and native governments
have sought to make an end of the custom. But in both countries it
still prevails. Nor are these Eastern countries substantially
different from their Western neighbors.
The record of Western Europe is summarized by Oscar Helmuth Werner,
Ph.D., in his book, _"The Unmarried Mother in German Literature."_
"Infanticide," says Dr. Werner, "was the most common crime in Western
Europe from the Middle Ages down to the end of the Eighteenth
Century." This fact, of course, means that it was even more largely
practiced by the married than the unmarried, the married mothers being
far greater in number.
"Another problem which confronted the church," he says in another
place, "was the practice of exposure and killing of children by legal
parents." A sort of final word from Dr. Werner is this: "Infanticide
by legal parents has practically ceased in civilized countries, but
abortion, its substitute, has not."
How desperately woman desired freedom to develop herself as an
individual, apart from motherhood, is indicated by the fact that
infanticide was "the most common crime of Western Europe," in spite of
the fact that some of the most terrible punishments ever inflicted by
law were meted out to those women who sought this means of escape from
the burden of unwanted children. Dr. Werner shows that in Germany, for
instance, in the year 1532, it was the law that those guilty of
infanticide were "to be buried alive or impaled. In order to prevent
desperation, however, they shall be drowned if it is possible to get
to a stream or river, in which they shall be torn with glowing tongs
beforehand."
Notwithstanding the fact that at one time in Germany, the punishment
was that of drowning in a sack containing a serpent, a cat and a
dog--in order that the utmost agony might be inflicted--one sovereign
alone condemned 20,000 women to death for infanticide, without
noticeably reducing the practice.
To-day, in spite of the huge numbers of abortions and the
multiplication of foundlings' homes and orphans' asylums, infanticide
is still an occasional crime in all countries. As to woman's share in
the practice, let us add this word from Havelock Ellis, taken from the
chapter on "Morbid Psychic Phenomena" in his book, _Man and Woman_:
"Infanticide is the crime in which women stand out in the greatest
contrast to men; in Italy, for example, for every 100 men guilty of
infanticide, there are 477 women." And he remarks later that when a
man commits this crime, "he usually does it at the instance of some
woman."
Infanticide tends to disappear as skill in producing abortions is
developed or knowledge of contraceptives is spread, and only then. One
authority, as will be seen in a later chapter, estimates the number of
abortions performed annually in the United States at 1,000,000, and
another believes that double that number are produced.
"Among the Hindus and Mohammedans, artificial abortion is extremely
common," says Westermark. "In Persia every illegitimate pregnancy ends
with abortion. In Turkey, both among the rich and the poor, even
married women very commonly procure abortion after they have given
birth to two children, one of which is a boy."
The nations mentioned are typical of the world, except those countries
where information concerning contraceptives has enabled women to limit
their families without recourse to operations.
It is apparent that nothing short of contraceptives can put an end to
the horrors of abortion and infanticide. The Roman Catholic church,
which has fought these practices from the beginning, has been unable
to check them; and no more powerful agency could have been brought
into play. It took that church, even in the days of its unlimited
power, many centuries to come to its present sweeping condemnation of
abortion. The severity of the condemnation depended upon the time at
which the development of the foetus was interfered with. An
illuminating resume of the church's efforts in this direction is given
by Dr. William Burke Ryan in his authoritative and exhaustive study
entitled "_Infanticide; Its Law, Prevalence, Prevention and History"_.
Dr. Ryan says: "Theologians of the church of Rome made a distinction
between the inanimate and the animate foetus to which the soul is
added by the creation of God, and adopted the opinions of some of the
old philosophers, more particularly those of Aristotle, as to
animation in the male and female, but the canon law altogether
negatived the doctrine of the Stoics, for Innocent II condemned the
following proposition:
"'It seems probable that the foetus does not possess a rational soul
as long as it is in the womb, and only begins to possess it when born,
and consequently in no abortion is homicide committed.' Sextus V
inflicted severe penalties for the crime of abortion at any period;
these were in some degree mitigated by Gregory XIV, who, however,
still held that those producing the abortion of an animated foetus
should be subject to them, viz., and excommunication reserved to the
bishop and also an 'irregularity' reserved to the Pope himself for
absolution."
To-day, the Roman church stands firmly upon the proposition that
"directly intended, artificial abortion must be regarded as wrongful
killing, as murder." [Footnote: Pastoral Medicine] But it required a
long time for it to reach that point, in the face of the demand for
relief from large families.
As it was with the fight of the church against abortion, so it is with
the effort to prevent abortion in the United States to-day. All
efforts to stop the practice are futile. Apparently, the numbers of
these illegal operations are increasing from year to year. From year
to year more women will undergo the humiliation, the danger and the
horror of them, and the terrible record, begun with the infanticide of
the primitive peoples, will go on piling up its volume of human misery
and racial damage, until society awakens to the fact that a
fundamental remedy must be applied.
To apply such a remedy, society must recognize the terrible lesson
taught by the innumerable centuries of infanticide and foeticide. If
these abhorrent practices could have been ended by punishment and
suppression, they would have ceased long ago. But to continue
suppression and punishment, and let the matter rest there, is only to
miss the lesson--only to permit conditions to go from bad to worse.
What is that lesson? It is this: woman's desire for freedom is born of
the feminine spirit, which is the absolute, elemental, inner urge of
womanhood. It is the strongest force in her nature; it cannot be
destroyed; it can merely be diverted from its natural expression into
violent and destructive channels.
The chief obstacles to the normal expression of this force are
undesired pregnancy and the burden of unwanted children. These
obstacles have always been and always will be swept aside by a
considerable proportion of women. Driven by the irresistible force
within them, they will always seek wider freedom and greater
self-development, regardless of the cost. The sole question that society
has to answer is, how shall women be permitted to attain this end?
Are you horrified at the record set down in this chapter? It is well
that you should be. You cannot help society to apply the fundamental
remedy unless you know these facts and are conscious of their fullest
significance.
Society, in dealing with the feminine spirit, has its choice of
clearly defined alternatives. It can continue to resort to violence in
an effort to enslave the elemental urge of womanhood, making of woman
a mere instrument of reproduction and punishing her when she revolts.
Or, it can permit her to choose whether she shall become a mother and
how many children she will have. It can go on trying to crush that
which is uncrushable, or it can recognize woman's claim to freedom,
and cease to impose diverting and destructive barriers. If we choose
the latter course, we must not only remove all restrictions upon the
use of scientific contraceptives, but we must legalize and encourage
their use.
This problem comes home with peculiar force to the people of America.
Do we want the millions of abortions performed annually to be
multiplied? Do we want the precious, tender qualities of womanhood, so
much needed for our racial development, to perish in these sordid,
abnormal experiences? Or, do we wish to permit woman to find her way
to fundamental freedom through safe, unobjectionable, scientific
means? We have our choice. Upon our answer to these questions depends
in a tremendous degree the character and the capabilities of the
future American race.