There may be no harm in preventing the conception of a life, but once conceived it should not be deprived of its existence in that world which in all its appointments is specially adapted to its development.
What are some of the incentives to produce abortion? An unmarried woman seduced under false representations by a man who feels no responsibility for his own offspring, suffers alone all the shame and contumely of the act, and is tempted to cause miscarriage to shield her good name.
Married women who fear that maternity will interfere with their pleasures, are guilty of forcibly curtailing embryotic life. Others, again, who are poor or are burdened with care or grief, or have licentious or drunken husbands, shrink from adding to an already overburdened existence.
The first class, the girls who have lost their virtue under promise of marriage are most deserving of sympathy and commiseration, though none receive less. “Let him who is without sin cast the first stone.” At the least imputation against a fair girl’s character, even those professing to be the followers of the loving Christ, often have so little leniency, so little of the Father’s love in their hearts, that they hug their Christian robes to their bodies, lest they be contaminated by the polluting touch of the victim. They “pass by on the other side” and leave the poor broken-hearted child bleeding by the wayside.
The girl’s lessons of life and purity have been learned mainly from one she loved and trusted, only to be betrayed. What wonder that in her ignorance of the value of life she should be tempted to add a second wrong to the first? She knows the shadow that has darkened her path; she realizes:
“Alas! for the rarity
Of Christian charity
Under the sun.”
And if she can conceal the evidence of her guilt, she may hope by honest endeavor to retrieve her good name, and thus is tempted to produce an abortion.
Two wrongs can not make one right. Before God and her own conscience, the only tribunals that in justice have any right to accuse her, she can not by any act gain absolution.