CONTRACEPTIVES OR ABORTION?
Society has not yet learned the significance of the age-long effort of
the feminine spirit to free itself of the burden of excessive
childbearing. It has been singularly blind to the real forces
underlying the cause of infanticide, child abandonment and abortion.
It has permitted the highest and most powerful thing in woman's nature
to be hindered, diverted, repressed and confused. Society has
permitted this inner urge of woman to be rendered violent by
repression until it has expressed itself in cruel forms of family
limitation, which this same society has promptly labeled "crimes" and
sought to punish. It has gone on blindly forcing women into these
"crimes," deaf alike to their entreaties and to the lessons of
history.
As we have seen in the second chapter of this book, child abandonment
and infanticide are by no means obsolete practices. As for abortion,
it has not decreased but increased with the advance of civilization.
The reader will recall that one authority says that there are
1,000,000 abortions in the United States every year, while another
estimates double that number.
Most of the women of the middle and upper classes in America seem
secure in their knowledge of contraceptives as a means of birth
control. Under present conditions, when the laws in most states regard
this knowledge, howsoever it be imparted, as illicit, and the federal
statutes prohibit the sending of it through the mails, even the women
in more fortunate circumstances sometimes have difficulty in getting
scientific information. Nevertheless, so strong is their purpose that
they do obtain it and use it, correctly or incorrectly.
The great majority of women, however, belong to the working class.
Nearly all of these women will fall into one of two general groups--the
ones who are having children against their wills, and those who,
to escape this evil, find refuge in abortion. Being given their choice
by society--to continue to be overburdened mothers or to submit to a
humiliating, repulsive, painful and too often gravely dangerous
operation, those women in whom the feminine urge to freedom is
strongest choose the abortionist. One group goes on bringing children
to birth, hoping that they will be born dead or die. The women of the
other group strive consciously by drastic means to protect themselves
and the children already born.
"Our examinations," says Dr. Max Hirsch, an authority on the subject,
"have informed us that the largest number of abortions (in the United
States) are performed on married women. This fact brings us to the
conclusion that contraceptive measures among the upper classes and the
practice of abortion among the lower class, are the real means
employed to regulate the number of offspring."
Thus a high percentage of women in comfortable circumstances escape
overbreeding by the use of contraceptives. A similarly high percentage
of women not in comfortable circumstances are forced to submit to
forced maternity, because their only alternative at present is
abortion. When accidental conception takes place, some women of both
classes resort to abortion if they can obtain the services of an
abortionist.
When society holds up its hands in horror at the "crime" of abortion,
it forgets at whose door the first and principal responsibility for
this practice rests. Does anyone imagine that a woman would submit to
abortion if not denied the knowledge of scientific, effective
contraceptives? Does anyone believe that physicians and midwives who
perform abortions go from door to door soliciting patronage? The
abortionist could not continue his practice for twenty-four hours if
it were not for the fact that women come desperately begging for such
operations. He could not stay out of jail a day if women did not so
generally approve of his services as to hold his identity an open but
seldom-betrayed secret.
The question, then, is not whether family limitation should be
practiced. It _is_ being practiced; it has been practiced for ages and
it will always be practiced. The question that society must answer is
this: Shall family limitation be achieved through birth control or
abortion? Shall normal, safe, effective contraceptives be employed, or
shall we continue to force women to the abnormal, often dangerous
surgical operation?
This question, too, the church, the state and the moralist must
answer. The knowledge of contraceptive methods may yet for a time be
denied to the woman of the working class, but those who are
responsible for denying it to her, and she herself, should understand
clearly the dangers to which she is exposed because of the laws which
force her into the hands of the abortionist.
To understand the more clearly the difference between birth control by
contraceptives and family limitation through abortion it is necessary
to know something of the processes of conception. Knowledge of these
processes will also enable us to comprehend more thoroughly the
dangers to which woman is exposed by our antiquated laws, and how much
better it would be for her to employ such preventive measures as would
keep her out of the hands of the abortionist, into which the laws now
drive her.
In every woman's ovaries are imbedded millions of ovules or eggs. They
are in every female at birth, and as the girl develops into womanhood,
these ovules develop also. At a certain age, varying slightly with the
individual, the ripest ovule leaves the nest or ovary and comes down
one of the tubes connecting with the womb and passes out of the body.
When this takes place, it is said that the girl is at the age of
puberty. When it reaches the womb the ovule is ready for the process
of conception--that is, fertilization by the male sperm.
At the time the ovule is ripening, the womb is preparing to receive
it. This preparation consists of a reinforced blood supply brought to
its lining. If fertilization takes place, the fertilized ovule or ovum
will cling to the lining of the womb and there gather its nourishment.
If fertilization does not take place, the ovum passes out of the body
and the uterus throws off its surplus blood supply. This is called the
menstrual period. It occurs about once a month or every twenty-eight
days.
In the male organs there are glands called testes. They secrete a
fluid called the semen. In the semen is the life-giving principle
called the sperm.
When intercourse takes place, if no preventive is employed, the semen
is deposited in the woman's vagina. The ovule is not in the vagina,
but is in the womb, farther up, or perhaps in the tube on its way to
the womb. As steel is attracted to the magnet, the sperm of the male
starts on its way to seek the ovum. Several of these sperm cells
start, but only one enters the ovum and is absorbed into it. This
process is called fertilization, conception or impregnation.
If no children are desired, the meeting of the male sperm and the ovum
must be prevented. When scientific means are employed to prevent this
meeting, one is said to practice birth control. The means used is
known as a contraceptive.
If, however, a contraceptive is not used and the sperm meets the ovule
and development begins, any attempt at removing it or stopping its
further growth is called abortion.
There is no doubt that women are apt to look upon abortion as of
little consequence and to treat it accordingly. An abortion is as
important a matter as a confinement and requires as much attention as
the birth of a child at its full term.
"The immediate dangers of abortion," says Dr. J. Clifton Edgar, in his
book, "_The Practice of Obstetrics_," "are hemorrhage, retention of an
adherent placenta, sepsis, tetanus, perforation of the uterus. They
also cause sterility, anemia, malignant diseases, displacements,
neurosis, and endometritis."
In plain, everyday language, in an abortion there is always a very
serious risk to the health and often to the life of the patient.
It is only the women of wealth who can afford the best medical skill,
care and treatment both at the time of the operation and afterwards.
In this way they escape the usual serious consequences.
The women whose incomes are limited and who must continue at work
before they have recovered from the effects of an abortion are the
great army of sufferers. It is among such that the deaths due to
abortion usually ensue. It is these, too, who are most often forced to
resort to such operations.
If death does not result, the woman who has undergone an abortion is
not altogether safe from harm. The womb may not return to its natural
size, but remain large and heavy, tending to fall away from its
natural position. Abortion often leaves the uterus in a condition to
conceive easily again and unless prevention is strictly followed
another pregnancy will surely occur. Frequent abortions tend to cause
barrenness and serious, painful pelvic ailments. These and other
conditions arising from such operations are very likely to ruin a
woman's general health.
While there are cases where even the law recognizes an abortion as
justifiable if recommended by a physician, I assert that the hundreds
of thousands of abortions performed in America each year are a
disgrace to civilization.
The effects of such operations upon a woman, serious as they may be,
are nothing as compared to the injury done her general health by drugs
taken to produce the same result. Even such drugs as are prescribed by
physicians have harmful effects, and nostrums recommended by druggists
are often worse still.
Even more drastic may be the effect upon the unborn child, for many
women fill their systems with poisonous drugs during the first weeks
of their pregnancy, only to decide at last, when drugs have failed, as
they usually do, to bring the child to birth.
There are no statistics, of course, by which we may compute the amount
of suffering to mother and child from the use of such drugs, but we
know that the total of physical weakness and disease must be
astounding. We know that the woman's own system feels the strain of
these drugs and that the embryo is usually poisoned by them. The child
is likely to be rickety, have heart trouble, kidney disorder, or to be
generally weak in its powers of resistance. If it does not die before
it reaches its first year, it is probable that it will have to
struggle against some of these weaknesses until its adolescent period.
It needs no assertion of mine to call attention to the grim fact that
the laws prohibiting the imparting of information concerning the
preventing of conception are responsible for tens of thousands of
deaths each year in this country and an untold amount of sickness and
sorrow. The suffering and the death of these women is squarely upon
the heads of the lawmakers and the puritanical, masculine-minded
person who insist upon retaining the abominable legal restrictions.
Try as they will they cannot escape the truth, nor hide it under the
cloak of stupid hypocrisy. If the laws against imparting knowledge of
scientific birth control were repealed, nearly all of the 1,000,000 or
2,000,000 women who undergo abortions in the United States each year
would escape the agony of the surgeon's instruments and the long trail
of disease, suffering and death which so often follows.
"He who would combat abortion," says Dr. Hirsch, "and at the same time
combat contraceptive measures may be likened to the person who would
fight contagious diseases and forbid disinfection. For contraceptive
measures are important weapons in the fight against abortion.
"America has a law since 1873 which prohibits by criminal statute the
distribution and regulation of contraceptive measures. It follows,
therefore, that America stands at the head of all nations in the huge
number of abortions."
There is the case in a nutshell. Family limitation will always be
practiced as it is now being practiced--either by birth control or by
abortion. We know that. The one means health and happiness--a
stronger, better race. The other means disease, suffering, death.
The woman who goes to the abortionist's table is not a criminal but a
martyr--a martyr to the bitter, unthinkable conditions brought about
by the blindness of society at large. These conditions give her the
choice between the surgeon's instruments and the sacrificing of what
is highest and holiest in her--her aspiration to freedom, her desire
to protect the children already hers. These conditions--not the
woman--outface society with this question:
"Contraceptives or Abortion--which shall it be?"