The unwelcome child

by Henry Clarke Wright

THE HUSBAND’S RESPONSE.

“‘My Suffering Wife:

“‘I have a word to say to you now, such as I never said before. Your letter has revealed you to me as I have never before seen you. It shows me to what utter misery I have brought you;—how, for my gratification, you have descended into the lowest hell.

“‘You intimate that I treat other women, personally, more tenderly and reverently than I do you. That is true: to my shame and regret I say it. And yet, why should I do so? Why should I crush and desecrate you, while I have too much respect for other women ever to think of doing the same to them? There is no reason for it. You are my dearest love. I should treat you more tenderly than any others; be more careful of your health, and beauty of body and soul. Of all women, the husband should most anxiously watch over the health of his wife, and most shrink from the abuse and desecration of her physical as well as spiritual womanhood.

“‘But I have not been wholly blind to your deep misery. I have seen it, and, at times, feared that I might be the cause. I did not dare ask the cause. Feeling not myself that degradation and misery of which you speak, I did not know how much you suffered; but I should have known, had I not been blinded by passion, and by the false idea that man had a right to the indulgence of his passional nature whenever he wished it, and that, too, without regard to the feelings of his wife, or the welfare of the child that might ensue.

“‘True, I, at times, heard your words of remonstrance and entreaty, but they did not touch my heart; my passion made me deaf or indifferent to your appeals to my manhood to spare you from a maternity which you could not joyfully welcome. I was lost in my own hell, and tormented. I was blind; but now and then, glimpses came to me, from your own keen anguish, of the real truth. But the blur of selfish, craving passion, would come over my sight, and I would go on my old way, cheating myself always, and sometimes you, into the feeling that it was all right; that man had a right to that indulgence, whatever might be the conditions of the wife, and whatever her feelings in regard to Maternity. At least, I persuaded myself and you that I could not help it, and that my health would suffer unless I frequently held that relation with you.

“‘Now that blind dominion of passion is at an end. Your appeal to my manhood has reached its deepest depths. The gratification of animal passion shall no more guide me in my relations to you. That it ever has is my shame, as well as your degradation. I wish you could see my soul as it now is; you would see a revolution in it. The deep wail of your spirit has reached my heart, and I am ready to go up with you out of the perdition into which my uncontrolled sensualism has cast us.

“‘You have descended into hell, for my gratification. You have consented to terrible anguish of body and soul, for no higher object than my momentary pleasure. You have sacrificed your body and soul, your self-respect, your unborn children, on the altar of my ungovernable passion. From this hour, I will seek to repair the wrong I have done you. I have forced on you, in contempt of your entreaties, a maternity which could not be otherwise than most hateful to you. I have compelled you to pass through sufferings of body and anguish of mind which you were not ready to meet, and which were all the more severe, because they were imposed by one whom you loved, and who should have known better. I have imparted to you the elements of a new life, when your very soul spurned and loathed them. I have filled your heart with deadly hatred towards the young life, my own child, that was being developed beneath it. I have compelled you to a deed of all others the most loathsome and hateful to a pure, refined and noble woman,—to the murder (it should have no other name) of your children, to the murder of my children, ere they were born, to save them from the more fearful and horrible doom of an unwelcome and hated existence.

“‘Talk not to me of your guilt, of your unworthiness to stand by my side, and to tread with me the path of life as a true, noble and loving wife. If you are guilty, what am I? If you feel degraded by the loss of self-respect, what ought I to feel? The fault is all my own. I should have known better, and had a higher appreciation of the passional relation. Had I consulted your wishes as to maternity, had I counselled with you as to when you could, with safety and exultation, take charge of the germ of my child, and naturally develop it into life, had I never imposed on you a repulsive and abhorred maternity, would the stain of abortion now darken your soul? Yes, I see it all: the deep damnation of the deed is my own, and would to God that the penalty might descend on me; that I could save you, my long-suffering, too lenient and forgiving wife, the pain and anguish!

“‘God help me! I am very sick at heart. The bitterness of death enters my soul, as I reflect on the unseen and unexpressed pain of body and desperation and anguish of soul to which my ungoverned passion has brought you. Can you forgive me? Can you again restore me to your loving confidence? Can you ever again respect my manhood, which has brought upon you all this woe? I will, henceforth, comply with the teachings of the book you sent me, and hold my entire nature in abeyance to your wishes and happiness, and in all my passional relations with you, my object shall be your health and happiness, rather than my own gratification. I will be to you an Ernest, God helping me.

“‘Dearest! believe me and trust me now, for I mean what I say, and it shall be done. I have written it here, and this shall be my pledge; and if ever I urge on you a relation that will subject you to the liability of maternity, when you do not call for it, lay this pledge before me and it shall be respected.

“‘We shall yet rejoice together on earth as we never did before. This world may not bring to you entire restoration to health of body, nor peace of mind, nor yet self-abandoned trust in your husband; but the effort to effect this, on my part, shall not be wanting. Believe me, and trust to the love, the faith and energy which your letter, and that experience of Ernest and Nina, have awakened in me. We will together seek the aid of the angel helpers, who never condemn save to restore and bless, and who are even now lifting up and vitalizing the desponding and heart-stricken.

“‘Dear wife! look up, and trust—trust—TRUST! and with strong nerve, and in conscious pride and innocence, you shall yet stand by my side, and tread with me the pathway of the future, a proud, loving, trusting, joyous wife. Your soul shall yet shine with deeper lustre on my manhood, to elevate and save your conscience-stricken, but not despairing husband. You shall yet be, in deed and in truth, my Saviour, and I will be yours.

“‘These are not idle words, but come from the heart of your loving, penitent, yet hopeful and confident

“‘Husband.’

“It will do your heart good to know that that husband has, thus far, been true to his pledge; that that wife is now blooming again in comparative health. Hope and triumph are shining in her face, love quickens the intellect, and vitalizes the whole woman. And woman is intuitional, to understand and appreciate a true and noble manhood. You will not wonder, then, that she feels nearer to him, in mind and spirit, than ever before, for now she understands him, and he her. Could they have talked over the subject of passional relations, and understood each other before they entered upon their marriage life, it had saved her years of anguish. May their history be a beacon light to warn others to shun the rocks and shoals that lie, unseen, in the inner depths of wedded life!

“It may encourage you to know that they owe their salvation to you, though they allow that I have had a hand in it. True, it was through me that the experience of Ernest and Nina came to their knowledge, but I am quite willing that the author of ‘Marriage and Parentage’ should bear the responsibility and have the glory of their redemption. Their names are sacredly private. They would meet you without feeling that you know them. I shall not reveal them further than I have done.

“God speed you in your efforts to vindicate the most sacred and important of all human rights,—the right of woman to say when and under what circumstances she shall assume the office of Maternity, and the right of her child to a joyous welcome into life.

“The crime of an enforced and abhorred maternity! Well and truly do you call it, ‘THE CRIME OF EARTH.’ In whatever light it is viewed, whether in its bearing on the mother, on the child, on the husband, on home, on society, or on humanity, it is, indeed, THE CRIME OF CRIMES.

“With fervent prayers for the triumph of truth on this subject, I am

Your friend,

——.”

My friend, how many wives would thus appeal to their husbands, if they dared? “Sever the last link of the bond that binds her to her husband!” Mere sensualism “the last link” in such a union! I do not like to talk of chains, links, and bonds, in connection with such a relation. Talk of these in connection with slaveholders and slaves, but let them not sully a relation like this. “The last link,” indeed! Yet it is true; it is, often, the first, and last, and only link in the chain that binds the husband to the wife, in what is called marriage. Man seeks woman as a legal wife, that he may legally and respectably give indulgence, without restraint, to his passion. If the wife seeks to preserve her soul and body from desecration, he threatens to leave her, and seek his gratification where he can find it. She submits, to keep him with her; both of them, unmindful and regardless of the results to the mother and the child. “Perish all outward bonds” of marriage at once, rather than that the relation should continue in this way!

Wives! be frank and true to your husbands, on the subject of maternity, and the relation that leads to it. Interchange thoughts and feelings with them, as to what nature allows or demands, in regard to these. Can maternity be natural, when it is undesigned by the father, or undesired by the mother? Can a maternity be natural, healthful, ennobling to the mother, to the child, to the father, and to home, when no loving, tender, anxious forethought presides over the relation in which it originated?—when the mother’s nature loathed and repelled it, and the father’s only thought was his own selfish gratification; the feelings and conditions of the mother, and the health, character and destiny of the child that may result being ignored by him? Wives! let there be a perfect and loving understanding between you and your husbands, on these matters, and great will be your reward.

Maidens! a word to you. Never enter into the physical relations of marriage with a man, until you have conversed with him freely and fully on maternity, and the relation that leads to it. Learn distinctly his views and feelings, and his expectations, in regard to that purest and most ennobling of all the functions of your nature, and the most sacred of all the intimacies of conjugal life. Your self-respect, your beauty, your glory, your heaven, as a wife, will be more directly involved in his feelings and views and practices, in regard to that relation, than in all other things. As you would not become a weak, a miserable, imbecile, unlovable and degraded wife and mother, in the very prime of your life, come to a perfect understanding with your chosen one, ere you commit your person to his keeping in the sacred intimacies of home. Beware of that man, who, under pretence of delicacy, modesty, and propriety, shuns conversation with you on this relation, and on the hallowed function of maternity. Concealment and mystery, in him, towards you, on all other subjects pertaining to conjugal union, might be overlooked; but if he conceals his views here, rest assured it bodes no good to your purity and happiness as a wife and a mother. You can have no more certain assurance that you are to be victimized, your soul and body offered up, slain, on the altar of his sensualism, than his unwillingness to converse with you on subjects so vital to your happiness. In the relation he seeks with you will he, practically, hold his manhood in abeyance to the calls of your nature and to your conditions, and consecrate its passions and its powers to the elevation and happiness of his wife and children? If not, your maiden soul had better return to God unadorned with the diadem of conjugal and maternal love, than that you should become the wife of such a man and the mother of his children.

How much of woman’s suffering and degradation, under the horrors of an unnatural maternity, are owing to herself, I will not say. My appeal is to husbands, and I would show them the extent of their responsibility in this crime. Doubtless, woman might save herself much anguish and suffering, if she would approach man frankly, in womanly love, tenderness, and dignity, and open to him the depths of her soul in regard to Maternity, and the relation in which it originates. Men are not all below the brutes, in their nature. If woman were true to purity, to justice, to her own nature, and would be just and true to her husband and her children, and freely and lovingly converse with man on these relations and functions, he would, often, with manly pride and affection, respond to her. On no subject would a true and noble man respond to the words of a pure and trusting woman with more manly pride and dignity, and a more conscious self-respect, than on Maternity, and the relation that leads to it. Let wives, then, be true to themselves, if they would have their husbands true to them!

H. C. W.

LETTER VI.
WORDS FITLY SPOKEN, BY ONE WHO SPEAKS WITH AUTHORITY.

Dear Friend:

Would you secure for yourself, your wife and your children, a pure and happy home? Of one thing, then, you must never lose sight. You now regard your wife as fitted to be your companion, intellectually and socially, as well as affectionally. Be sure that no effort is wanting, on your part, to keep her so. If her intellect becomes stunted, and she be deprived of the means and opportunities for improvement, while you enjoy every opportunity to cultivate and enlarge your intellectual powers, how can she possibly feel herself fitted to be your equal companion?

Let me ask you carefully to read over the “Appeal of the Wife to the Husband,” in the last letter. Mark well what she says on this subject; how she feels, as she finds herself losing all power to sympathize in the intellectual aspirations and pursuits of her husband. She, intellectually, was sinking, while he was rising; was growing poorer, while he was growing richer; and he took little pains to impart to her his increasing intellectual wealth. All opportunities for intellectual growth were precluded by the anxieties of maternity, which he, without a thought for her intellectual welfare, was constantly imposing upon her. Never impose this function upon your wife, at the expense of her intellectual growth. No wife can ever be made intellectually poorer by maternity, and the cares of a mother, when that relation is joyfully welcomed, and those cares are shared by the husband. But how can a wife’s intellect ever be expanded with new and noble thoughts, when the physical sufferings and mental anguish of a frequent and an undesired maternity are ever present?

Stay at home with the mother of your children, except when necessary avocations call you away. Share with her the cares, the anxieties and joys, of the nursery. There cultivate your intellectual powers together by reading, and by conversation,—especially, on all subjects pertaining to parentage and the ante-natal, as well as the post-natal, development, education and life of your children. How anxious will every true and loving husband and father be, to unite with his wife and the mother of his children, in the nursery, to impart and to receive all possible light in regard to these matters!

Neither should you ever impose maternity on your wife at the expense of her social nature. Never go abroad to enjoy and develop your own social nature, and leave her at home alone in the nursery, preparing to give birth and a worthy reception to your child, or to spend her weary hours in solitude, in anxious watchings over your children, and in longings for your presence and your sympathy. Stay with her, and share with her all the joys and all the sorrows, all the sweet rest and all the weary labors, of a maternity imposed by you, and of developing into noble men or women the offspring of your mutual love.

But how crushed, intellectually and socially, must that wife become, on whom an ignorant, a thoughtless, or a brutal husband, is ever imposing a maternity from which her soul recoils! Her intellect becomes dwarfed and her social nature dead. How can it be otherwise, especially when driven to the deed of ante-natal murder, to escape the horror of giving birth to children accursed by the mother that bore them? Hope becomes extinct, and the light of her soul goes out in utter darkness!

The following letter must speak for itself. It is nearly a verbatim extract from a letter, the original of which is now before me. No man, especially no husband, can read it, and not feel quickened in all that is truly manly, noble and God-like. Of this woman, as to her style and her sentiments, every true man will feel that to be true which the people said of the teachings of Jesus—“He speaks as one having authority.” May her words of power find a response in the heart of every husband and wife, and of every man and woman!

“The subject of an undesigned and undesired maternity,—how it affects the mother towards the child, towards the function of Maternity itself,—these are matters, on which, as a wife and a mother, and a friend of Human Progress, my mind has been deeply exercised since they were first presented to me. The delicate and hallowed beauty with which you invest maternity, and the relation that leads to it, renders it easy for me to impart to you my views on these subjects, while I feel instinctively repelled from any approach to them with most other persons, both men and women.

“The thoughts I have do not flow from my own experience. I have never given birth to a child not earnestly desired. Yet, being a woman and a mother, it seems to me no difficult matter to judge correctly as to what must necessarily be the emotions and effects produced by such a maternity.

“But I must express my earnest conviction, that any woman, any wife, who permits herself to be made the instrument of bringing into life a new existence, unwelcome to her own soul, must, in some degree, be wanting in that self-respect which is an inseparable accompaniment of, nay, an essential element in, true nobility of character. That woman must feel degraded before her own soul, who, for any cause, in or out of legal marriage, suffers herself to be made the means of such an outrage upon her innocent and helpless babe. Better, a thousand times, that she leave her legal husband at once and forever, than allow soul and body to be thus prostituted, and herself to be made accessory to a deed so unnatural and unjust as that of giving birth to a child whose existence is repudiated and loathed by her own heart.

“Public opinion, based on his superior physical strength and (hitherto) superior intellectual development, has accorded to man the dignity of lordship. Looking over the face of the earth, he says, ‘See all things for my use, even woman.’ And as the Bible, in many of its teachings, as these are explained, sanctions this arrogance, declaring that the ‘man was not made for the woman, but the woman for the man,’ she herself, the just authority of Nature being educated out of her, and the arbitrary authority of man educated into her, believes it her duty to yield implicit obedience to all the demands of the man to whom she has declared allegiance at the altar;—the altar, truly; for there she is frequently offered a propitiation to satisfy the demands of man’s unholy passion; and from henceforth this being, created with reason, conscience and intuitions of her own, and for her own guidance, believes it her highest duty to sacrifice all these to the authority and the licensed sensualism of the husband, for whose pleasure she was created, and to ‘obey even as Sarah obeyed Abraham, calling him Lord.’

“This much may be said to account for the fact that so many women, otherwise excellent and amiable, lend themselves to the commission of this great crime; a crime against themselves, against their children, against their husbands, against our great humanity. And while thus prostituting their persons according to law (made for this very end, and solely by those who prostitute them), they deceive themselves into the stupid belief that they are leading pure and virtuous lives, and look with scorn and contempt upon the poor sister who commits the same unnatural and revolting deed in an unlawful and less reputable manner.

“Human decrees and enactments can never alter or reverse human obligations. What is wrong without a license or commission from human government, is wrong with such a license. If an undesigned and undesired maternity be a dark and damning sin against the child, the mother, and humanity, against God, without the sanction of the Church, the State, and public opinion, it is a sin of an equally dark and damning character with such sanction. In every case where the act that leads to maternity would be a sin, a foul and monstrous crime, and the shame and infamy of one or both parents, without the sanction of human laws, it would be the same with such sanction, and in a legalized union. Those women, therefore, who for any cause, allow an undesired maternity to be imposed on them by men holding the legal relation of husbands, and permit themselves to be made the means of giving existence to children whom they do not want, in legal marriage, ought to be, and one day will be, regarded in the same light as those are who become mothers outside of wedlock. If it be wrong for a woman to become a mother, without the consent of Church and State and society, it is wrong for her to become a mother with such consent. If right with such consent, it is right without it. Whatever it is right to do with a civil, ecclesiastical or social license, it is right to do without it.

“If woman’s life be made a curse by the constant endurance of suffering, consequent upon a too-frequent maternity, the religious woman often endeavors to stifle the outcries and accusations of reason and intuition by the absurd plea that she ‘must have all the children whom it is God’s will to send.’ Occasionally, one is found weak enough, and wickedly fond enough, to say, as Miss Bremer, with contemptible silliness, makes one of her amiable characters in ‘The Home’ say, ‘that though she had such a large and rapidly increasing family, and her husband’s means of providing for it were somewhat limited, yet he never grumbled, and was always ready to welcome each new child as it came!’ Grumble, indeed! A husband ‘grumbling’ that his wife has conceived! A father ‘grumbling’ at the birth of a child! ‘Always ready to welcome each new child as it came!’—and this said by a wife of her husband, as the strongest testimony to his manliness and justice as a husband and father, and as the highest reason why she should love and honor him! What man so base, so ignoble, so fallen, and so deserving a dungeon or the gallows, as he who imparts the germ of a new life to his wife, to gratify his passion, and then ‘grumbles’ because a child is born, and thrusts it from him? Man can give no greater proof of the utter degradation and ruin of his moral nature. Yet not to grumble at a maternity of his own imposing, and not to repel and cast off the babe for whose undesired existence he is responsible, is Miss Bremer’s highest conception of manhood!

“But a false religious education is not the only reason why woman weakly and unrighteously yields herself to the base and brutal passion of her husband; for a passion, though all pure and ennobling when its demands are just and naturally answered, becomes most base and brutalizing to men and women, when indulged at the expense of the child, and contrary to the wishes of the wife and mother. As society is now constituted, she is his dependant. The laws make her subservient to his will, while she continues a wife, and all-pervading custom has, in great measure, deprived her of the dignity which an independent ability to engage in business for herself, outside the domestic circle, would confer.

“‘Can do is easily carried about,’ is a pithy old Scottish proverb; and this same ‘Can do’ is a good and sturdy staff of self-support, when a woman finds that the man on whom she fondly leaned would become to her, not a tower of strength and a refuge from the storm, but the oppressor to crush both soul and body, and make of her very Womanhood an unworthy thing. Let woman respect herself. She will gain nothing by submitting to wrong and outrage. No wife ever gained or perpetuated the love and respect of a husband, deserving the name, by yielding to his passion, merely to please him.

“It is the popular, but foolish and unthinking belief, that children owe great obligations to their parents for bringing them into life; but is not the contrary the fact, that parents are under the strongest possible obligations to their children to render that being good, wise, and happy, which they themselves have forced upon their child? Assuming this as self-evident, then is it clear that such existence should not be the result of blind, unthinking passion, but of careful, wise and loving design.

“The act in which the child originates is performed, often, solely for the momentary gratification of one or both parents. No thought for the welfare, the physical, mental and spiritual organization and tendencies of the child that may ensue, is entertained. No careful and anxious forethought for the character and destiny of the child is exercised, but the gratification of mere animal passion is the sole object sought. The child comes into being undesigned by the father and undesired by the mother,—the offspring of reckless, selfish, sensual lust, and not of tender, self-forgetting, noble love. How grievous the wrong done by the father to the mother, and by the mother to herself, and by both to the child who is thus thrust into the world by violence! What hope can exist for such a child? The felon’s doom was written on his soul before he was born. His parents consigned him to the dungeon or the gallows ere he drew the breath of life.

“The woman who, in youth, is flattered and caressed for the charms of her person, the sweetness of her temper, and the goodness of her heart, when married to a man who thus regards her as but the instrument of his pleasure, soon loses the charms for which she was caressed, and, while the husband is in his prime, she enters upon a premature old age; her physical strength exhausted by the almost constant suffering and agony attendant upon giving existence to those poor, unwelcome ones,—her beauty faded, her temper soured, her whole soul embittered by a consciousness of her hard lot, and her mental nature stunted in its growth,—for what leisure has she to attend to the wants of her own spirit, while her energies are taxed to the utmost with the care of her living children, who are solely dependent on her, and she preparing to add another to the number? How can she fill the treasure-house of her own soul with ‘things new and old,’ under all these adverse circumstances, and while the present physical wants of her little ones are constantly clamoring, ‘Give! give!’ Does not reason, does not justice, demand for woman that she have full opportunity for the development of her own Womanhood, soul, body, and spirit? Has not she, as an individual child of God and member of the human family, a right to this? Does not the well-being of such children as she may righteously bring into existence loudly call for a full and practical recognition, on the part of every husband and every man, of her right to decide for herself when, how often, and under what circumstances, she shall assume the office of Maternity, or be subjected to the relation that may issue in maternity? Does not the happiness, the best interest of the husband, require it? Does not Humanity itself demand it?

“And how must that woman, in whose soul the theory of passive obedience has not wholly eradicated nature, regard the husband who causes her thus to curse ‘the day wherein she was born’ a woman? In her inmost soul, she must look upon him as the half-enlightened slave looks upon his master, and bitterly reproach him for victimizing her to his own base passion, and for his own short-lived gratification, irrespective of the woful consequences to her whom he has sworn to cherish, honor and protect. And justly does she thus regard him. No wife can love and honor such a husband. He is to her what the executioner is to the victim, or the slaveholder to his crushed and outraged slaves. She cannot but loathe him.

“Can love do any injury to its object? Must not the wife become alienated from the husband, who, instead of cherishing her health and beauty, and seeking her happiness, subjects her to the loss of all these, and instead of honoring, basely enslaves her to his own infamous passion?—who, instead of protecting from evil, exposes her to sickness, sorrow and death, not in accordance with her own free will, her own glad choice, in pursuit of an object worthy and great enough to inspire hope, courage and strength to meet the coming suffering, and the attainment of which shall amply compensate, and cause her ‘to remember no more the anguish, for joy’ that a new life is given unto her, but simply and solely that his own mean, selfish, animal nature may find present satisfaction? Deserves such a man the blessings of a home of love and harmony, the devotion of wife and little ones? Alas! no; he has planted only curses, and ‘whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.’

“Must not such a wife, too, regard the creative function in both herself and husband with loathing and abhorrence? And did not the power of refusing this unwelcome maternity reside within herself, who could blame her for reproaching even the great Creator for so endowing her with a capacity for unremunerative suffering? And what must be the atmosphere of that house (I will not dignify it by the sacred name of home), where the wife and mother regards her own nature as degraded,—her husband the tyrant who degrades, and her children the fruits of this degradation? Is that house a fit nursery for the germs of a noble Humanity? Do not plants there take root which cumber the earth, and, in their turn, fill it anew with those briers and thorns of human kind, which render its habitations places of cursing and bitterness?

“Alas for the poor child of such a parentage! Receiving his very being by a base act of the father, nourished until birth underneath the heart of the mother, whose whole nature protests against its existence, feeding upon her bitterness, hatred, and sense of humiliation, the gall and wormwood of her soul infused into its young being, coming at last into the world destitute of the inheritance of love,—the inheritance justly his own,—where shall be the resting-place of that child’s soul? Around what can it lovingly cling? Even its own mother regards it as an unwelcome intruder; in whose loving bosom shall it be tenderly nurtured?

“Perhaps the mother who bore him used her best endeavor to cut short his earthly existence ere he saw the light; and, failing in this, when ushered into the world, grudges him the care and sustenance necessary to sustain that existence. Or if, as is more frequently the fact, with the actual presence of the helpless innocent in her bosom, somewhat of the mother’s heart awakens into life, it is not that rich, overflowing life of love which pours the wealth and fulness of her own being into his. She cares for him as the animal cares for its young in its utter helplessness; and then the weary woman, with many other children about her, and preparing for a new maternity, thrusts him from her as soon as possible, and the little yearling must ‘tak the stirk’s sta’ (the stall of the yearling calf). What can the poor, unwelcome child become? How small are his chances for a virtuous life! If he thinks God has so created him, well may he plead with poor Burns—

‘Thou knowest thou hast formed me

With passions wild and strong.’

‘Can a bitter fountain send forth sweet water?’ ‘Where shall I get them?’ was the reply of a criminal to Jonathan Edwards, who told him he must have better thoughts.

“Alas for poor Humanity! ‘Let there be light,’ that man may know that the relation that leads to maternity can only be ennobled when its object is the creation of a new and glorious life; that his passional nature can only derive dignity and beauty from the control of love and reason; that otherwise, it is of the earth, earthy, and debases him below the level of the brute. ‘Let there be light,’ that woman, in whose soul resides the power, may say to this overwhelming flood of evil, ‘Here shall thy proud waves be stayed!’ The errors of a false religious education, bad laws, and bad customs, have, hitherto, formed some extenuation for this weak subserviency; but this ignorance has been tolerated full long, and now the great cry of God and Humanity goes forth calling for repentance,—that ‘a new heavens and a new earth may be created, wherein shall dwell righteousness.’”

Man has a heart, and that heart can be reached by the loving and earnest appeal of a true woman. Words, such as those contained in the above extract, will never be uttered in vain. They are the true oracles of Nature’s God, as revealed in the soul of the wife and the mother. Let the father hearken to the mother as she pleads, in behalf of her children, that they may not be cursed with an unwelcome existence. Let the husband listen to the prayer of his wife, that she may be spared a maternity whose responsibilities she is not prepared joyfully to assume. Humanity utters her indignant protest against man, when, to gratify his sensual passion, he perpetrates the greatest possible outrage against woman, as a wife and mother, and as a woman, by subjecting her to the necessity of cursing her child with an abhorred existence, or of killing it before it is born. Protestations of love and devotion must ever seem insulting and disgusting to a true woman, from a man who would thus recklessly inflict upon herself and her child this foul wrong. In vain does such a man prate of his regard for the purity and honor of woman, of his reverence for marriage and parentage, and of his desire for the elevation of our common humanity; his life, in the sacred privacy of home, is an insult to his wife, an outrage upon the mother of his children, an act of living injustice and cruelty to his offspring, and a crime of deepest infamy against all that is true, pure and noble in human nature.

Man will not always be thus heedless of the health and happiness of his wife; he will not always be thus unjust and inhuman to his innocent and unconscious children, by making them objects of dread, of loathing and cursing, to the very heart under whose pulsations they receive their ante-natal development. He will subject his manhood to the health and happiness of his wife and children; and in doing so, will receive the richest reward earth can bestow,—the perfect trust of a devoted wife, and the loving respect of a healthy, happy and joyous offspring.

H. C. W.

LETTER VII.
THE DREAD ALTERNATIVE—ANTE-NATAL MURDER, OR AN UNWELCOME CHILD.

Dear Friend:

The following experience of a woman, given in her own words, will make its appeal to all that is pure, manly and noble in manhood. It is the cry of anguish from woman’s riven heart to man, to save her from the agony and blighting curse of a maternity whose sufferings she is not prepared joyfully to meet, and from which her entire nature shrinks with dread and loathing; to save her from the revolting alternative of killing her child before it is born, or of giving life to one whose very existence is loathed by her. Several times, the crime of an undesired maternity had been perpetrated upon her by her husband, and each time the child had been killed by herself or by a doctor, before its birth. She was asked how she felt under these outrages, and what was the result on her physical, social and spiritual nature. The following is her answer:

“How did I feel? I felt that I was committing a damning sin. My soul shrank from the deed with intense horror and loathing. The remonstrances of a guilty conscience I could not silence. I had submitted to the relation in which maternity originates, thinking it my duty, as a wife, to do so whenever my husband demanded. I told him that my very soul shrank from maternity; that I was not yet prepared for its responsibilities and agonies, and begged of him not to impose that burden upon me till I could joyfully welcome it, which I felt that I should, in due time. But he heeded not my prayer. He insisted on the relation. Conception and maternity ensued.

“My soul died within me. An ever present loathing of the new life that was being developed within mine was in my heart. My own soul, and the God whose voice was heard within, repudiated its existence. I could not help the feeling. The spirit of murder, towards the unconscious child in embryo, was ever present to me; yet my soul shrank with horror from the deed. Shall I kill my child before its birth, or give existence to one whose birthright inheritance is a mother’s curse? was the question I found myself debating continually;—for my curse was on its very life.

“I consulted a woman, a friend in whom I trusted. I found that she had perpetrated that outrage on herself and on others. She told me it was not murder to kill a child any time before its birth. Of this she labored to convince me, and railed in the aid of her ‘family physician,’ to give force to her arguments. He argued that it was right and just for wives thus to protect themselves against the results of their husband’s sensualism,—told me that God and human laws would approve of killing children before they were born, rather than curse them with an undesired existence. My only trouble was, with God’s view of the case. I could not get rid of the feeling that it was an outrage on my body and soul, and on my unconscious babe. He argued that my child, at five months (which was the time), had no life, and where there was no life, no life could be taken. Though I determined to do the deed, or get the ‘family physician’ to do it, my womanly instincts, my reason, my conscience, my self-respect, my entire nature, revolted against my decision. My Womanhood rose up in withering condemnation. And, after the deed was done, I felt that I could never respect myself again; that I could never again appear in society; that if I did, all that was pure and true in manhood and womanhood would shrink from me as a polluted, disgusting object.

“I tried to cast the blame on my husband, who had imposed the necessity upon me. I tried to feel that the outrage and the guilt were all his own; that, had he heeded my prayer, and dealt justly by me, I should never have been driven to the dread alternative of ante-natal murder, or of giving birth to a child I did not want. But I saw and felt, that however great the wrong he had done to me, the fact still remained,—my nature was outraged, if not by my consent, yet by my sufferance. I knew I could have saved myself from maternity, had I been resolute to do so; and that, having submitted to the relation in which it originated, I had no right to add to the outrage by killing my child. I felt myself to be a crushed, prostituted, abandoned woman. Can any apology be offered for a woman who commits the crime of ante-natal murder, after she has voluntarily yielded to the relation that leads to maternity?

“Maternity, with its prospective agonies and its abhorred responsibilities (for I did not yet call for a child), was again thrust upon me in a few months; but I shrunk from destroying my child again. I gave birth to two living children. Then my soul rebelled against having more; but my husband was deaf to my prayers and my tears, though he himself was opposed to my having any more children, and insisted it was my fault if I did, though he persisted in his right to his sensual indulgence. How could I avoid having more children, when he was continually demanding of me the relation which naturally leads to offspring? ‘Kill them,’ was his reply, ‘before they are born, or do something to prevent conception!’

“His injustice and heartless selfishness cut me to the quick,—stung my very soul. ‘This is the man,’ I said to myself, ‘who has promised to love, cherish, and protect me; who expects me to love him tenderly and evermore; whom I have promised to love till death separates us; and yet, this is the man who, without regard to my wishes and conditions, insists on his right to gratify his passion, though at the expense of my body and soul!’ My soul rose in rebellion against him. It became evident to me, that the gratification of his passion was his only object in seeking me as a wife; that this was the only claim he had upon me, or wished to have, and that he had no higher idea of marriage than as a means of licensed, reputable indulgence.

“I became desperate. I could not leave my children. I knew if I left him, I could give no reason for the step, except my aversion to having maternity thrust upon me in defiance of the demands of my own nature, and I knew that all would condemn me, if I left him to escape from such an outrage, as this was not considered a wrong to me, but his right. Every feeling of my soul revolted against his taking possession of my person, without my consent, to blight and curse my body and soul to gratify his animal nature.

“I came to the conclusion to stand by my own rights, and defend my person against his sensualism. I told him, candidly, how I felt, and that I must protect myself, in this respect, for he would not. I told him I was living daily in deadly fear of his passion, and of maternity; that the relation in which it resulted had become repulsive to me, and that he had brought me to view myself as a loathed, abject and prostituted woman. His wrath was roused; and finally, from fear of breaking up my family and having my helpless living children taken from me, I submitted to a hell which had no mitigation, until separation gave it to me.

“In my intercourse with men, I have found few who did not view marriage and a wife as my husband did, as a mere means of sensual gratification. Companionship, intellectual, social, and spiritual growth, and elevation, they think little of, in connection with a wife. They see no soul, no God, in the wife; only the mere animal, to administer to the brute in them.”

In the presence of a just and pure God, and before the laws of Nature that are designed to govern all conjugal relations, does marriage give to the husband any right over the person of the wife, or to the wife any rights over the person of the husband, which neither had before? Has a husband any more right to demand of his wife the surrender of her person to his passion, than he has to demand that surrender of any other woman? True marriage creates necessities in each, and gives vitality and intensity to wants in each, which the presence, the love and companionship of the other can supply; but a pure conjugal love creates no rights, and never thinks or talks of rights over the property, the body, or the soul of the loved one. Indeed, a true man, whose soul is filled with a holy conjugal love for a woman, would scorn and loathe any personal caresses or surrender from her, when he knew she gave them merely from a sense of duty, and only because she believed he had a right to them. A man must be shorn of all true manliness, and become utterly debased and prostituted, before he can, in or out of legal marriage, accept the personal surrender of a woman to his passion, when he knows the surrender is made solely to please him, or from some false idea of duty. However tenderly, truly and devotedly a man may love a woman, she is not, therefore, under obligations to receive any expressions from him, except such as her own necessities demand. Whatever manifestations of yourself you would make to your wife, before offering them, create in her the necessity of demanding and of receiving them. If your nature prompts you to reveal yourself to her in the relation that leads to maternity control yourself, and be sternly true to yourself, to your wife, and your child that may ensue, until, by all other loving and endearing manifestations, you have created in her nature an earnest call for maternity. Then would she joyfully accept of you the germ of a new life, and, for the sake of her husband and her child, consecrate all the energies of her soul to its true development.

Read the following. The extract is from a letter written by one who has proudly and nobly filled the stations of a wife and a mother, and whose children and grandchildren surround her and crown her life with tenderest love and respect. She has seen many of the companions of her girlhood victimized, and literally offered up on the altar of sensualism, in legal marriage. Their husbands demanded passional gratification as their right, irrespective of consequences to wife or children, and they submitted as a duty. Their career was short, in many cases, and in others, they live but wrecks of their former selves. A relation that should have ennobled and saved them, has crushed them to death:

“It has often been a matter of wonder to me that men should, so 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.

“As to her husband, she really thought he could not control himself without great injury. He had convinced her that the laws of God and man gave him the right to that indulgence with his legal wife as often as he desired, and if conception ensued, it was no fault of his; that he was blameless, as to any wrong done. I could not but feel disgusted and horrified, to see all that was lovely and good in my child thus sacrificed to a man’s low sensualism. When a husband thus deliberately treats his wife as a mere means of sensual gratification, it blunts all that is refined and noble in her, and makes him an object of disgust to her. And she, in her nature, must exercise the love-principle or starve, and she wastes it on others more congenial, who will respect her womanly nature. Often this is the cause of her throwing herself into temptation, and becoming a victim of the base passions of those who are ever on the watch for such. Thus she is driven, step by step, to utter prostitution,—all from being made the slave to the sensual passion of the husband. Had she had a spiritually-minded and noble husband, or the courage to assert her rights, her home would have been her heaven, and her progress and improvement, not her degradation and ruin, the law of his life.”

Read the following. It must be an inhuman and monstrous religion which can countenance a crime so unnatural as enforced maternity, or ante-natal murder:—

“Those among us who are members of our churches, and are counted most exemplary patterns of purity and piety, to my certain knowledge, practise ante-natal murder, and they justify themselves by saying, ‘It would be a greater sin against children to entail on them the curse of an abhorred existence, than to kill them before they are born!’ These pious women affected to be greatly shocked, when, in your lectures here, you appealed to their husbands to control their passions, and spoke of the crime of enforcing on women a maternity whose responsibilities and sufferings they were not prepared joyfully to welcome. But Nature is ever true to herself. No matter who they are that perpetrate this outrage, whether rich or poor, high or low, pious or impious, whether in the church or out of it, they become weakly, and incurably diseased; their constitutions soon break down under this abuse, and they pass away by consumption, or some nameless, wasting disease, and their death is, by most people, attributed to a ‘wise and good Providence.’ The husbands, the real murderers, are pitied, and soon comforted by taking other wives, only to kill them in the same way. How can a woman feel proud of the nature God has given her, after thus abusing it? She cannot. She must feel in her soul that she is degraded, and her very existence becomes a loathing to herself. Who drives her to this inhuman deed?—who, indeed, but the very husband to whom she so fondly looked for protection from all harm?”

Dear Friend,—The following positions seem to me to be clearly sustained:

1. That it is a crime of the deepest dye, for a husband to impose on his wife, without design, a maternity whose responsibilities and sufferings she cannot joyfully endure.

2. That it is a sin for a husband to urge his wife to submit to a relation which may result in an undesigned and undesired maternity.

3. That no wife can stand proud and stainless before her own soul, who allows herself to come into a relation with her husband which may entail on her the curse of an unwelcome maternity, and reduce her to the revolting alternative of ante-natal murder, or of giving birth to a child whose existence is abhorrent to her soul.

May not every child, in justice, demand of its parents, as a birthright inheritance, (1) a healthy body, free from all tendency to disease; (2) a healthy soul, free from all tendencies to idiocy, and insanity of intellect or of heart; (3) a designed existence, the result of a wise and tender forethought, and not of blind, impetuous, selfish, sensual passion; (4) a love origin, rather than a mere sensual, animal origin; and (5) a joyous welcome into life? As you cast your little ones afloat on the ocean of eternal being, be careful to secure to them this outfit; then may you hope to see them bravely and successfully outride the storms of life, and enter into a true and endless rest. But what hope is there for these poor, diseased, suffering little ones, the offspring of a loathed and hated maternity, whose very existence, ere they were born, was made accursed by the mothers that bore them, and by the fathers, whose only thought or aim in the act in which they originated was mere sensual gratification? God pity these poor, unwelcome ones! No earthly parents welcome them into life with loving smiles. In whose warm, loving bosom can they be tenderly cherished? To whom can they look for love and sympathy? Again I say, God pity these poor, unwelcome children!

That your home may never be cursed by an undesigned and undesired maternity, or by an unwelcome child, is the anxious wish of

Your friend,

H. C. W.

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TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES

1. Silently corrected obvious typographical errors and variations in spelling.
2. Retained archaic, non-standard, and uncertain spellings as printed.