Nor does the act of giving birth to children confer true motherhood. Maternity is not necessarily motherhood any more than matrimony is always marriage. There are many mothers who have never borne children. And there are many women with children who know not the first faint dawn of that wonderful, beautiful and intense (because spiritual) love which comes most often in the guise of motherhood, but which is always present when two souls who are truly mated contact each other's inner nature.
If the women of today will insist upon the sacredness and the rightfulness of birth the women of tomorrow will not seek to evade motherhood. If the women of today will establish the sacredness of all life; if they will not rest until every child that is born into this world is recognized as legitimate and more, is welcomed; is given every advantage of education, of healthful body, of right moral training, rest assured that the women of the future will seek only to rival each other in the quality and the perfection of their motherhood.
The efforts of many radicals to enact legislation regulating the birthrate, the struggle to disseminate knowledge of how to prevent conception, may be well meant as these things are consistent with prevailing conditions. But they are not the final answer to the problem. Love is the only answer. Where love is permitted to rule, children are not only welcome but ecstatically desired and provided for.
Motherhood is a hope and a joy to the normal woman. Comparatively every woman would be normal under proper social and economic conditions. When women seek to evade maternity it is either because of lack of sufficient means to care for children, or it is because of lack of sufficient love. Or it is because of fear of that modern mo-loch, Public Opinion.
When a woman truly loves a man, she longs to be the mother of his children. A balanced world will make it possible for every woman to be free from the bondage of fear and poverty, and ill-health, leaving her free to be guided in the most vital and important function of her life, by the call of the highest love of which she is capable. Love will establish motherhood as a divine privilege. Certainly no other power on earth or in the realms above can do so. Neither preachments nor platitudes, nor punishments, nor legislative blunderings. Love is the only saviour of mankind. There is no other true God.
Some day the symbol of Deity which now depicts Man crucified will be superseded upon all altars by the image of a winged babe, and when this comes to pass, Humanity will rise to that ideal.