heedlessly, and so injuriously to themselves, their wives, and
children, and their homes, demand at once, as soon as they get legal
possession of their wives, the gratification of a passion, which, when
indulged merely for the sake of the gratification of the moment, must
end in the destruction of all that is beautiful, noble, and divine, in
man or woman. I have often felt that I would give the world for a
friendship with man that should show no impurity in its bearing, and
for a conjugal relation that would, at all times, heartily and
practically recognize the right of the wife to decide for herself
when, how often, and under what auspices, she should be a mother, or
enter into the relation that leads to maternity.
“It is often said in my hearing, by women, that a woman who is not
willing to submit her person to the passion of her husband, whenever
he shall demand, is not fit to be a wife; and if she becomes so, and
her husband forsakes her for other women, and neglects his children,
he is to be pitied, and the wife condemned and held responsible for
all the results. The law gives the husband cause for divorce if the
wife persists in withholding her person from his embrace, which, when
thus thrust upon her against her wishes, becomes loathsome and
damnable. The community of women generally endorse this state of
things, and are educated to believe that God gave man such fierce
passions that he cannot control them; that they must be gratified
whenever excited, though at the expense of woman’s health and
happiness and the happiness of her children.
“Will man ever be pure, noble and strong enough to protect woman, in
or out of legal marriage, against his own passion? Must woman always
put herself on the defensive, to protect herself against man? Will man
never see the fact as it is, that all that is manly, true, great and
noble in his nature, must be preserved and perpetuated only by the
protection of woman against being victimized to his sensual
gratification? O man! thou art all noble and God-like, to the loving
and trusting heart of woman! She longs to come to thee, to save thee,
and to be saved by thee. But thou mayest be assured that thy heaven,
in time and eternity, can be secured only by saving woman from
prostitution. While she is regarded by thee as the means of sensual
gratification, rather than as the vitalizing, redeeming power of thy
manhood, she will bring desolation and death to thy soul, and thou to
hers. To man, woman looks for strength. How she longs to rest in
him,—how she longs to give herself to him in a self-abandoning
trust,—and how she longs that he may ever be worthy such a trust, the
heart of the true woman and wife alone can ever know. But when woman
trusts and man proves weak, and betrays her longing and trusting
heart, no words can express her sickening, crushing disappointment and
anguish. Often do women prefer to die a lingering and loathsome death,
rather than confess themselves mistaken and disappointed in those whom
they have trusted.”
The following extract from a private letter speaks the thought and
feeling of every true woman. Weigh well what the writer says of woman’s
right to protect herself against the reckless passion of man. Also, what
she says of woman’s power over man, and of man’s readiness to yield to
that power, when woman has the courage to appeal to his love:
“I cannot conceive of a woman, who has willingly and joyfully received
into her own being the germ of a new existence, with the noble design
of rendering that existence happy, ever committing this foul deed
[abortion]. The cause of it must always be, the previous submission to
an unwelcome maternity. If this can be justified, if the laws of man
and of God oblige woman thus to degrade and violate the sacredness of
her own person, it follows that she, being thus outlawed, placed
outside the protection of all law, human and divine, has a right to
protect herself from further evil, and even avenge herself for the
past, as she best can; and that whether by taking the life of her
husband or of his child. Can this be denied as a necessary
consequence? and does not the bare statement of it disprove the
monstrous assertion that God, either by Nature or Revelation, has thus
placed her at the disposal of man’s will? No living creature is
created without some means of self-protection; and in woman, that
weapon is _Self-Respect_.
“It makes my soul sick, even to a loathing of Humanity, to think of
this unnatural deed, and its foul cause. Alas! men and women do not
worship their own natures. ‘Let us eat and drink,’ they cry, ‘for
to-morrow we die!’—‘Let us sacrifice the _human_ to appease the
_brute_.’
“Does not the crime of murder consist mainly in the fact, that every
soul born on this planet has an inherent right to all the development
it can receive in this, its birthplace, and when deprived of corporeal
existence, is robbed of this right? If this be true then ante-natal
murder of the same nature and character as post-natal murder. Yet for
the one crime the criminal is accounted, by our judges, and by the
sentiment of the public, to be worthy of death; whereas, these same
judges, and this same public, incite to the commission of the other,
by subjecting woman to an abhorred maternity.
“Where is the wrong? In the _man_, first of all. He it is who subjects
the woman to this abhorred maternity, and for his own sensual
gratification. For him there is no apology, save the miserable one
that passion overcome love and reason, the animal triumphs over the
man, the sensual over the spiritual.
“In the mind of the woman who allows herself to become thus basely
subservient to her husband’s will, how loathsome is the memory of
those progenitors who bequeath to the man a nature so mean, selfish,
tyrannical and animal, and to the woman a nature so tamely, so ignobly
subservient and unresisting! Where is the remedy? In the awakening of
woman to this great evil. Woman must assert and maintain her rights in
regard to maternity, ere any rational hope can be entertained for the
future. I cannot believe that man would become the fierce, selfish
tyrant he now is, if properly appealed to before his heart becomes
hardened by indulgence,—that he who, in the general transactions of
life, is just and honorable, would become the selfish despot at home,
if the woman who is his wife fully respected her nature as woman, and
her individual sacredness.
“Let woman, then, be appealed to. Let her ‘arise from the dust, and
put on her beautiful garments,’ for then, and not till then, shall her
light break forth as the morning, and Humanity become all glorious.
But while woman, by law, custom, and religion, is made subservient to
man’s sensual gratification, without regard to her feelings and
wishes, while law, custom and religion bestow on man the right to
inflict on woman a maternity whose suffering and responsibilities she
is not prepared joyfully to welcome, and while woman, to gratify man’s
sensualism, is subjected to the atrocious alternative of ante-natal
murder, or of giving existence to children whom her inmost soul
repels, there can be no hope of the regeneration and redemption, the
elevation and happiness of the race, and of peopling the earth with
nobler and more beautiful types of manhood and womanhood.”
How many husbands are unwilling to have their wives get knowledge as to
their right to decide when they shall become mothers, or be subjected to
the relation that leads to it! Let woman get light on this, if on no
other subject, if she would be happy in her home. Slaveholders count him
most guilty who attempts to teach their slaves their right to be free.
So many husbands curse bitterly the man who would enlighten their wives
in regard to Maternity, and the relation that leads to it. But true and
earnest souls are pledged to spread light on this subject. Read the
following:
“Married women are often as ignorant, and about as degraded, as to
their rights and duties, respecting the function of Maternity and the
relation that leads to it, as are the slaves of the South in regard to
their rights. Many husbands are as unwilling that their wives should
get light on these subjects, as are slaveholders that their slaves
should be enlightened in regard to their condition. They must not be
allowed to know that they are not morally bound to submit. They must
have no will of their own; and by their weak subserviency, they even
say to their husbands, ‘God thy law,—thou mine,’ as to Maternity and
the relation that leads to it. How can they know that there is any
other and nobler way, than to have children and complain, and complain
and have children, and submit themselves to their husbands’ sensualism
with entire servility and silence?
“Never has any man spoken a truer and more needed word than you have
spoken, or held out a more helpful hand to woman, to enlighten her
ignorance and to raise her from degradation, than you have done, in
your work on ‘Marriage and Parentage.’ To me and my husband, that book
has been as a message direct from God, to guide us in our most sacred
relations in the sanctuary of our home. We wait anxiously for your
work on ‘The Crime of an Undesigned and Undesired Maternity.’ We can
ensure for it a wide circulation in this region; for the _ante-natal_
history and education of human beings, in its bearing on their
_post-natal_ character and destiny, is becoming a subject of paramount
interest in many true and earnest souls.”
The following testimony to the wide-spread practice of ante-natal murder
is from one who has carefully noted the progress of this crime, and its
dire effects on the physical and moral conditions of those who
perpetrate it, and on their husbands and their homes:
“A friend of mine told me that she should have killed two of her
children, ere they were born, had she known how. She tried, but could
not succeed. The children whom she tried to murder were born alive,
and are now living; but they are stamped with the spirit of revenge
and murder. They struggled into life against the spirit of murder, and
the maternal curse must remain upon their souls till eternity shall
cast it out. This friend and myself made an estimate of the number of
our near neighbors who, to our knowledge, had killed one or more of
their children before they were born. Six, out of nine, had done the
deed, or had procured the services of a ‘family physician’ to do it
for them. They all justified the practice of ante-natal murder. A
doctor in a neighboring village, who ever frowns upon this unnatural
deed, assured me, recently, that he had been applied to by six
different women in this little village, in one week, to murder their
children before birth. Some of these women were the most fashionable,
wealthy and respected women of the town, and two of them were
church-members. They all insisted it was less criminal to kill
children before they were born, than to curse them with an unwelcome
existence.
“My husband and I have done what we could to circulate your work on
‘Marriage and Parentage’ in this region, and, already, it has brought
comfort to many homes where happiness had been well-nigh wrecked by
the unnatural demands of husbands, and by their imposing maternity on
their wives when they were unprepared to meet the consequent
suffering.”
The following shows how common, in cities, is the practice of ante-natal
murder. What a testimony against husbands who impose on their wives
maternity, without design, and contrary to their own wishes, and the
wishes of their wives!
“A physician in a neighboring city told me that it was very common,
among the more fashionable and wealthy among whom he practised, for
husbands, who wished to have their wives always ready for society, to
bring them to him and offer large sums of money to induce him to
procure abortion, and to prevent conception. Invariably, those who
practise this outrage on themselves lose their health, become
low-spirited, feel humbled and prostituted, and are made irritable,
complaining, nervous invalids for life, and wholly incapacitated for
the enjoyments of society. I know many who practise this foul crime.
Those who do it generally lose their self-respect, become ashamed of
their womanhood, and shrink away from society, conscious that they
deserve to be shunned or pitied, by all that is pure and noble. O!
why, why do husbands impose on their wives an alternative so horrible?
Why do women ever submit to a relation that subjects them to the
possibility of a maternity, whose sufferings they are not prepared to
meet? They had better starve, better die!
“Yet, in my ignorance, to please my husband, and to escape the agonies
of an undesired maternity, have I allowed this most unnatural outrage
to be perpetrated upon myself and my unborn children. I know the agony
of soul, and the conscious shame and degradation woman feels, when,
having allowed her husband to impose on her a maternity which her soul
abhorred, she resorts to ante-natal murder to avoid giving birth to a
child she does not want. I know no woman can practise this outrage on
herself, or allow another to practise it upon her, without injury to
body and soul. No woman, after doing this deed, can stand before her
own soul, or before her fellow-beings, as she did before.
“The unwelcome child!—maternity, abhorred by the mother and without
design by the father!—you call this ‘THE CRIME OF EARTH!’ It is. Lay
it open to the eyes of all, in its bearing on the purity and happiness
of home, and on the character and destiny of the race. ‘_Let there be
light!_’ In the name of God and humanity, and by all that is pure and
lovely in man or woman, and by all that is sacred and dear in the
relation of mother and child, ‘LET THERE BE LIGHT!’”
The following extract is from a wife and mother, who, with her husband,
is laboring earnestly and efficiently to elevate the human type. They
are ever active to surround themselves and their children with
knowledge, with just, pure and ennobling views and principles in regard
to marriage and parentage. They think this the _only_ way to save their
sons and daughters from the deep wretchedness and degradation of
inharmonious conjugal relations, from polluted homes, and from the crime
of giving existence to children they do not want. Mark! the woman, whose
modesty is shocked at every effort, however truthful, earnest and
delicate it may be, to enlighten husbands and wives in regard to the
natural laws designed to govern Maternity, and the relation that leads
to it, does not feel at all shocked by _ante-natal_ murder. She can even
justify herself in doing this most foul and monstrous deed:—
“When you lectured in this place, on ‘The Unwelcome Child,’ one lady
went out of the house, affecting to be greatly shocked by what you
said. Yet, that same woman who went out muttering curses on you, for
warning husbands against imposing an undesired maternity on their
wives, has, to my knowledge, had such a loathed and wretched burden
thrust upon her twice, in two years, and each time has killed her
child before it was born. Another lady, my near neighbor, who thinks
such subjects should never be agitated, publicly, has three times,
within so many years, committed the crime of ante-natal murder. The
first child was seven months old when she killed it. She told me this
herself. She is now but twenty-four years old. She has one living
child, and this must suffer for life, from the outrages perpetrated
upon it by the mother, ere its birth. She says she cannot, and will
not, have any more children yet. She says her husband insists on his
gratification, and she cannot prevent conception, and has no
alternative but to kill the children before they are born, or give
existence to those whom her soul repels, and thus entail on them a
mother’s curse. She justifies herself by saying, it is no greater sin
against the child, against herself, against society, and against
humanity, for a mother to kill her child before it is born, than to
give birth to it when her own heart loathes its existence.
“She is one of a large class, who are _thus_ trying to reconcile
themselves to _ante-natal_ murder. Still, she feels degraded, as all
must who do this deed. They _are_ degraded. A deed so unnatural and so
cruel can never be perpetrated without deep injury to the moral nature
of all concerned. The spirit that would kill a child before birth,
would kill it after; the spirit that would commit _ante-natal_ murder,
would commit _post-natal_ murder. But what shall be said of the
husband who subjects his wife to this fearful alternative? Can man do
a deed meaner, more selfish, more satanic?”
The organic and constitutional tendencies of those who are born are
fixed. It may take a mighty effort to correct their birthright
tendencies to disease and to crime. Thousands say, as the writer of the
following extract says,—“We were lamentably ignorant of the natural laws
of Parentage when we married. Would that light had come to us sooner.
But we will not allow the happiness of our children, and our children’s
children, to be wrecked for want of knowledge.” The following is the
testimony of a true and earnest woman, and loving and happy wife and
mother:—
“Before your visit to this place to lecture on ‘The Ante-Natal History
of the Human Being, and its influence on his Post-Natal Character and
Destiny, in the body and out of it,’ my husband and myself had talked
over the subject of Marriage and Parentage a great deal; but we never
had had it presented to our minds in so strong and clear a light
before.
“When I was married, I was most lamentably ignorant of the laws of my
nature, especially of those designed to govern Maternity. But my
husband, in regard to maternity, and the relation that leads to it, is
a most kind and considerate man, and I love and honor him all the more
for it. I wish your book on ‘Marriage and Parentage’ had fallen into
our hands before our children were born; we might have given them more
loving hearts, and nobler natures, in body and soul, by understanding
better how surrounding influences affect us before birth. But I am
thankful for my sake, and for my children’s sake, and for the sake of
the mothers that are to come after us, that your views are being so
widely made known through your writings and your lectures. If mothers
better understand the laws of Nature designed to govern maternity, and
the relation in which it originates, they will be more careful of
themselves, for sake of their children.
“I have heard many mothers express their thankfulness for your visit
and your conversations and lectures here. You have given hope and
gladness to many anxious and despairing hearts. The mother of six
little ones, and who is about to add another to the number, said to
me, ‘Such instruction is exactly what men and women need.’ I felt
sorry for her; yet not so sorry for her as for the unborn babe; for I
know its existence is most unwelcome to the mother.
“When I think of the great and good work in which you are engaged, my
heart blesses you, and bids you God-speed, for it is a subject of the
deepest interest to me as a wife and mother. Before this question of
Maternity, and the relation that leads to it, so far as the character
and destiny of the race are concerned, in this and in the future
state, all others sink into insignificance. It is most painful to hear
woman, in her vanity, her shallowness, and intellectual, social and
moral debasement, array herself against the only movement that ever
can raise her to a true estimate of herself as the mother of the race.
Till the right is conceded to her to determine for herself when, how
often, and under what conditions she shall be a mother, or be subject
to the relation that leads to maternity, woman can never become the
true and proud mother of a healthy, beautiful and noble offspring.
While she is a mother from necessity rather than from choice, she must
feel herself an abject, degraded being, and her children must partake
of her degradation. My husband and myself bid you God-speed! Our
hearts are with you.”
The following fact was communicated by a wife and mother, as having
occurred under her own observation, and in reference to her own
daughter. Let every father and mother read this, and see to what
extremities their daughters are often driven, to save themselves from a
maternity whose sufferings they are not prepared to endure:—
“My only daughter was married to a warm-hearted, impulsive young man
of twenty, when she was but sixteen. I besought him not to marry her
to gratify his passions, and endeavored to set before him and her the
certain consequences of a union formed for mere sensual purposes. She
was, and is, an innocent, artless, and frail creature. She was in poor
health, and I knew that absence from him preyed upon the life of her
body and soul. They married, and he took her to a distant western
State.
“In about four months, she came home to me, by his consent, a haggard,
emaciated wreck of a woman. The first moment she saw me alone, she
said to me, ‘Mother, they say I am about to become a mother, and my
husband wished me to come to you, to see if you could not prevent it.’
I told her it was impossible; she was so feeble, that the effort to
kill the child would kill her. She wept, and prayed me to save her
from the suffering and anguish of child-birth. ‘I have,’ said she,
‘the most loathsome and horrible feelings about it. I think it would
be a greater sin to give birth to a child, with the feelings I now
have towards it, than to kill it before it is born. The very thought
of giving birth to a child fills my soul with deadly enmity. My
constant prayer is, that the child may be destroyed. I would rather
die with it, than to give it birth under such circumstances. What will
the child be, after it is born, if I give birth to it with the
feelings I now have, and which I cannot help?’
“I earnestly tried to dissuade her from destroying it for several
days; but she became so desperate, that I feared she would kill
herself, and knew that if the child was developed and born, under such
a state of mind in the mother, it must inevitably be a desperado, or a
fugitive and vagabond on the earth. She had not one feeling of natural
desire for her child, but only sought its death. I took her to a
doctor, noted for his ante-natal murders, and he advised that the
child should be killed,—and he killed it. Her husband came after her,
and was thankful the deed had been done.
“But the husband had no thought of restraining his passion, and
insisted on its gratification, though maternity should ensue. In a few
months, maternity was again imposed upon her. She has no power of
endurance. He and she again wished the child to be destroyed, and it
was, by the same doctor. With all this dreadful suffering and anguish
of his wife, he insisted on his gratification. He had no higher
conception of marriage, than as a means of mere sensual indulgence. To
own her body, and use it for his gratification, he deemed his right as
a husband. She regards maternity with repulsion, and the relation that
leads to it; still, like most women, she thinks it a great misfortune
that husbands cannot gratify their sensualism without imposing on
their wives the necessity of abortion, or of giving birth to children
they do not want, and she lives in constant fear of losing the
affection of her husband, if she does not quietly yield to his
passion.