I.—The low _morale_ of the community as regards the guilt of
the crime.
II.—The ease with which its character, in individual cases, may
be concealed.
III.—The unwillingness of its victims to give testimony that
would also criminate themselves.
IV.—The possibility of their inducing abortion upon themselves
without aid.
V.—The ease with which the laws, as at present standing, may
be evaded.
VI.—The lack or inefficacy of judicial preventives; such as
statutes for registration, and those against concealment
of birth and secret burials.
VII.—The prevalent ignorance of the true principles of its
jurisprudence in both government officials and medical
witnesses.
VIII.—Social extravagance and dissipation.
IX.—The doctrines of political economists.
X.—The fear of child-bed.
* * * * *
That public opinion should at present attach so little importance to the
value of fœtal life, has already been shown to be owing in great measure
to ignorance respecting its actual existence in the earlier months of
pregnancy. Two other, and no less general, physiological errors prevail,
extensively inculcated by popular authors and lecturers for their own
sinister purposes.
One of these is the doctrine that it is detrimental to a woman’s
health to bear children beyond a certain number, or oftener than at
certain stated periods, and that any number of abortions are not merely
excusable, as preventives, but advisable; it being entirely forgotten
that the frequency of connection may be kept within bounds, and the times
of its occurrence regulated, by those who are not willing to hazard its
consequences; that if women will, to escape trouble or for fashion’s
sake, forego the duty and privilege of nursing, a law entailed upon
them by nature, and seldom neglected without disastrous results to their
own constitutions, they must expect more frequent impregnation; that the
habit of aborting is generally attended with the habit of more readily
conceiving; and that abortions, accidental, and still more if induced,
are generally attended by the loss of subsequent health, if not of life.
This error is one which would justify abortion as necessary for the
mother’s own good; a selfish plea. The other is based on a more generous
motive. It is that the fewer one’s children, the more healthy they are
likely to be, and the more worth to society. It is, however, equally
fallacious with the first, and is without foundation in fact. The
Spartans and Romans, so confidently appealed to, gave birth probably to
as many weakly children as do our own women; that they destroyed many
for this reason in infancy, is notorious. The brawny Highlanders are
not the only offspring of their parents; the others cannot endure the
national processes of hardening by exposure and diet, and so die young
from natural causes. But were this theory true even so far as it goes,
the world, our own country, could ill spare its frailer children, who
oftenest, perhaps, represent its intellect and its genius.
In asserting that the doctrines of the leading political economists for
the last half century are accountable for much of the prevalence and
increase of the crime, ignorant or careless as these writers all seem
of the dire means that would be resorted to for the attainment of their
ends, I have in no way exaggerated. Malthus remarks in his well-known
Essay on Population, that “in the average state of a well-peopled
territory, there cannot well be a worse sign than a large proportion of
births, nor can there well be a better sign than a small proportion;”[83]
and he endorses the assertion of Hume, subsequently proved false by
Sadler,[84] that the permission of child-murder, by removing the fear of
too numerous a family in case of marriage, tends to encourage this step,
and thereby the increase of population; “the powerful yearnings of nature
preventing parents from resorting to so cruel an expedient, except in
extreme cases.”[85]
Sismondi[86] and a host of others might also be quoted, but a few
extracts from a later writer, standard in this country at present, and
taught in our universities, till very lately in that at Cambridge, for
instance, will suffice.
“We greatly deprecate,” says Mill, “an increase of population, as rapid
as the increase of production and accumulation.”[87]
“There is room in the world, no doubt, and even in old countries, for
an immense increase of population. But although it may be innocuous, I
confess I see very little reason for desiring it.”
“I sincerely hope, for the sake of posterity, that they will be content
to be stationary long before necessity compels them to it.”[88]
“If the opinion were once generally established among the laboring
class, that their welfare required a due regulation of the numbers of
their families, only those would exempt themselves from it who were in
the habit of making light of social obligations generally.”[89] “The
principles contended for include not only the laboring classes, but all
persons, except the few who being able to give their offspring the means
of independent support during the whole of life, do not leave them to
swell the competition for employment.”[90]
“When persons are once married, the idea never seems to enter any one’s
mind, that having or not having a family, or the number of which it shall
consist, is at all amenable to their own control. One would imagine that
it was really, as the common phrases have it, God’s will and not their
own, which decided the number of their offspring.”[91]
“In a place where there is no room left for new establishments,” says
Sismondi, entirely ignoring the escapes offered by emigration and the
increased importation of food, “if a man has eight children, he should
believe that unless six of them die in infancy, these, and three of
his own contemporaries of each sex, will be compelled to abstain from
marriage in consequence of his own imprudence.”[92]
The direct result of remarks like these last, so pointed and plainly to
be understood, is seen in the statistics I have so largely given. Would
mankind, in following such advice, merely resort to greater abstinence
before their means allow the expense of children, and to greater prudence
after that period, no fault could be found; but when we discover criminal
abortion thus justified and almost legitimated, we may well oppose to
such doctrine the words of the indeed admirable Percival, “To extinguish
the first spark of life is a crime of the same nature, both against our
Maker and society, as to destroy an infant, a child, or a man.”[93]
Fear of child-bed, in patients pregnant for the first time, or who
had suffered or risked much in previous labors, might formerly have
been allowed some weight in excuse, but none at all in these days of
anæsthesia. It has been urged, and not so absurdly as would at first
sight appear, that the present possibilities of painless and so much
safer delivery, by changing thus completely the primal curse, from
anguish to a state frequently of positive pleasure, remove a drawback of
actual advantage, and by offering too many inducements for pregnancy,
tend to keep women in that state the greater part of their menstrual
lives.
* * * * *
The consideration in detail of the various other causes to which I have
alluded as accounting for the prevalence of abortion, together with that
of the many special reasons offered in individual cases by way of excuse,
I postpone for the present; merely premising that where ignorance is
so evidently and so extensively its foundation, those who, possessing,
yet withhold the knowledge which by any chance or in any way would
tend to prevent it, themselves become, directly, and in a moral sense,
responsibly accountable for the crime.