ANTENATAL INFANTICIDE.
The Alarming Prevalence of This Hideous Sin.—How Daughters
are Initiated.—How Expectant Mothers Appeal to Reputable
Physicians.—Young Women Should be Taught to Associate the Idea
of Marriage with Motherhood.—Destruction of own Health and Life
go Hand in Hand with Prenatal Murder.—Effect of Such Attempts
Upon the Physical Life and Character.—Life from the Moment of
Conception.—The Injustice and Cruel Wrongs Inflicted upon Wives
by Uncontrolled Passions of Husbands.—Obligation of Motherhood
Should be Recognized.—Its Blessings.—The Duty of the Physician
as Educator of Public Sentiment.
“The destruction of the end or purpose of an institution
is virtually the destruction of the institution itself. I
firmly believe that the greatest sin against God and the
greatest crime against society in the nineteenth century, is
the covert attack, which in one form or another, excused by
one consideration or another, is being waged against God’s
institution of marriage.”—REV. BREVARD D. SINCLAIR.
Do our young women consider and really understand the giant evil which
walks our streets sometimes covertly, sometimes so openly, that with
eyes of discernment it can be easily detected? This terrible evil that
has been so excused, so palliated that it stands out in the minds of
many, dressed, not in its hideous garb of sin and shame, but tricked
in taking dress and attractive coloring—so attractive that many of our
matrons have pointed it out and introduced it to our fresh, beautiful
daughters, and introduced them into its mysteries, and all the horrible
sin this evil is heir to.
I speak of the shamefully prevalent evil of antenatal infanticide.
I quote again from Mr. Sinclair. “A sin of such delicacy that people
affect to be shocked when it is alluded to, and yet a sin which is
practiced, applauded and commended so widely in private, that even the
children are not ignorant of its prevalence among their elders. Indeed
a sin, in which in many cases, daughters are deliberately nurtured and
trained, so that when opportunity is presented for its practice the
conscience is so stultified and suborned by long training and familiarity
with its hellish and poisonous consequences, that it is committed without
compunction.”
O mothers! with us rests in large measure the righting of this terrible
wrong. Are we aware ourselves of its loathsomeness, and are we prepared
to pronounce against it everywhere where our voices can be heard? Shall
we teach our daughters that the institution of marriage is for home and
children, and that unless they are prepared to make the home and desire
children, they are committing a grievous sin to enter its sacred portals?
Every reputable physician grows sick at heart many times, when he is
approached by these untaught and unscrupulous young and older women, to
ask him to be a party with them in the crime of murder, and possible
suicide. “The sin is none the less heinous, and the crime none the less
wicked when it is performed by those who affect ‘the best society,’ or
who with unworthy hands take the bread and wine at the communion table of
a dying Lord, who pronounced His blessing on the pure in heart.”
When an untaught young wife comes to us with a desire that she may be
“helped out of her difficulty,” and then proceeds to tell us that she
does not want children so early in her married life; that she wants to
enjoy herself first for a while, or she wants to make a visit, or take a
trip to Europe and cannot be in that condition; and that she has tried
all the simple means that she knows of, but has accomplished nothing; we
sit down patiently and tell her from the beginning the sin and danger of
it all; danger, not only to life, but also to all the higher instincts
of our nature; for when one deliberately takes a life, the conscience is
seared to all sin, and the pathway down to the lower depths is an easy
one. I can assure you, this is no easy task, for we have the teaching of
friends and relatives, yes, and I grieve to say, sometimes of mothers to
undo! Oh the sorrow of it!
Young women, with you rests the hope of the world in the betterment of
this sad state of things. Know that when you enter marriage with any
other thought than that you will be the joyful mother of children, you
commit a grievous sin. Know that any plan you may have made to obviate
this, indefinitely, while allowing the close marriage relation to exist,
is sinful and makes you partaker with abortionists, and those who would
destroy the holy institution of home and fireside.
When women who have grown older in years and experience enter my office
with their specious reasoning, women who have no excuse for not knowing
the evil thing which they are advocating, I feel like denouncing them
before the world as the enemies of God and womankind. Oh the shame that
woman who should be the helper and inspiration in all good things should
so lend her hand and heart to evil!
But the sin does not always stop with the murder. Many times her own life
is a sacrifice to her sin, or if not this, she is doomed to invalidism
the remainder of her days. Truly, as Mr. Sinclair says, “Many a woman
is buried with Christian burial, over whose grave ought to be placed a
tombstone with this inscription: “Here lies a suicide, assisted to her
grave by her murderers—her husband, her female counsellors, and the
conscienceless physician.””
There is no excuse whatever for the crime of abortion. The arguments are
many that are made to ease the conscience, or palliate the sin, but not
one of them will hold, before a tribunal of honest clean thinking people,
with God on the bench.
It is wicked, say they, to bring so many children into the world that
cannot be well taken care of; “I really have not the strength to take
care of any more;” and they go on in their sinful practice until health
is destroyed or life sacrificed. “I do not think that women should
give their lives to bearing children, and have no time for mental
improvement,” they say again, while they spend a great part of their
time in devising means to prevent conception, or in worry, lest they may
not succeed, while the little fragment of time and strength is given to
the pursuit of “culture,” and at the age, when, had they borne their
children and been joyful in training them, they would have been vigorous
and strong for years of mental work and wide culture. At this very time
because of what they have done they are pale broken-down women, with no
strength or ambition left for nobler pursuits than groaning over their
ill-health or seeking alleviation for their sufferings.
But their sin does not stop with themselves, but is written legibly upon
the lives of the children, who, in spite of their earnest endeavor to the
contrary, have stemmed the tide of evil, and come to maturity of term, if
not of vigor.
A late writer in a Christian journal has said, “There are thousands of
miserable objects in our insane asylums, hospitals, yea, in our jails,
who may honestly complain, ‘from our mothers cometh our misery.’ The
attempt to commit prenatal murder is frightfully common—as all women
and physicians know—and where it does not kill, malformations, idiocy,
and distorted moral powers are too often the results. For no one ever
breaks into ‘the house of life,’ and is innocent or unpunished. Prenatal
murder and self-murder walk hand in hand, crying to heaven as loudly as
did the blood of Abel. And should these women personally seem to escape,
yet there will come a day when God will ask them one terrible question,
‘Where are the children that I gave you?’”
Again they say, “There is no harm until there is life.” The moment
conception takes place, that moment there is life; and whether the crime
be committed in six hours, six weeks or six months, the sin is in all
cases of equal enormity. Murder is in the intent, not in the act alone.
When you intend to rid yourself of the little life if possible, you have
committed murder as surely as if the murdered child lay dead in your
arms, or it may chance live to denounce you with its disinherited life,
if not with its words.
But I would not denounce woman alone, for the wrong does not lie wholly
with her. Dr. Holbrook in an article on sanitary parentage, says: “That
which polite language veils under the designation ‘social evil,’ and
which desolates so many happy homes, and brings its quick harvest of
misery, remorse, disease and death, chiefly lives because man does not
know aright, does not truly reverence and honor woman, and keep in
subjection that which may become one of the monster passions in his
heart, and is thus continued from generation to generation.”
Often, we believe, are women driven to abortion, by maternity being
thrust upon them, when they are already weakened by too frequent
child-bearing.
A case of this kind came into my office a few days since. A bright,
pretty little woman, scarcely more than a girl, sat down before me with
the exclamation, “Doctor, I have missed my monthly period, and have come
in to have you give me something to set me right.” “Are you married?”
I questioned. “Yes,” she answered. “Do you not think that you may be
pregnant?” I enquired. “Yes: I fear that I am,” she cried, with tears
in her voice; “but I have one little one, not yet two years old, and a
baby of eight months, and it does not seem that I can have another one
now.” She was but twenty-two years old, and I could not help mentally
calculating, what the number would be were she obliged to go on at this
rate, until the child-bearing age was passed. My heart ached for the
child mother; but I could say to her only this: “My dear, do you think it
would be better for you to endanger your health, and perhaps take your
life, and leave your two babies without a mother, than to go on patiently
and have this baby, and live to care for them all?”
I said to her, “Never allow yourself to think for a moment, of taking the
life of a little unborn child; it is murder, dear, and nothing else. I
know you have not thought of it in this light. Go home, talk it over with
your husband candidly, tell him that you will never be guilty of the sin
of abortion, no matter how many children you have. Insist upon the better
way, namely, such continence in the marriage relation as shall not impose
the burden of maternity upon you oftener than once in two or three years.
Help him to see that the selfish gratification of his desires are hardly
worth while when secured at such a cost to your health and comfort. Make
him to see that the children that come from such self-indulgence cannot
be the strong, vigorous and noble children they would be if generated
under self-control. Occupy separate beds, and help him by every means in
your power to attain self-control, and become master of his passions,
not their slave.” I do not know the outcome, but I feel certain that the
little woman went home with something to think about, and I trust with
profit.
Above all, my dear young wives, do not underestimate the mighty,
unequalled power of the mother of several children. And know this, that
no work is so productive of true culture, in your own life, as the proper
bearing and rearing of children. Nothing so cultivates all the virtues
that alone serve as the foundation of true education and wisdom. As your
children grow you will be inspired to keep pace with them, and when they
have gone out from the home nest, you will find ample time to read and
study, and you will have the consciousness of a life well spent to urge
you on.
I believe firmly, that for the best results, offspring should be limited,
but limited in a legitimate way. When temperate lives are lived, not
more than five or six children come into a home, and this is but a good
family. Mothers of such families if they live within their means and
“look well to the ways of their households,” are not fretted, broken down
women, but hale and hearty, and as children mature are ready for years of
strenuous living, and community service.
No thwarting of nature has any ground for excuse, and the so-called
physician who peddles any theory or device for so doing has no right to
the name, and has no recognition among the ranks of the reputable of the
honored profession of medicine. His work is done in the dark and under
the pledge of secrecy, and so he marks himself of the abode of Satan.
No honorable physician can say, “I have never lent myself as a party to
this crime, hence my conscience is clear, my duty done.” No: your duty is
not done. Physicians stand or should stand as the guardsmen of the unborn
generations, and as educators of public opinion along these lines; and
their pen, their voice and their practice should form a trinity of power
against the inroads of this alarmingly threatening evil—threatening to
the best instincts of the moral nature of our time; threatening to the
future of our land, when we consider the very few children born into our
better homes, while in the byways, among the lower classes, the little
ones swarm in hot-beds of sin.
At least four children should be born and grow to maturity in every
American home in our land, to keep good the present number of our people.
The average is far below this, and the result is that the American race
is fast dying out.
We stand at the head of all the nations in the extent and enormity of
this crime. Shall we not stand at the head in a true reformation?