Many years ago during a visit to my cousin, a young married woman called with her four months old baby—a thin-necked, bloodless, blue looking child. After she left, cousin observed, “Is it not a shame that young people have so little knowledge? That poor child is suffering because the parents too frequently practice the privileges accorded in the marriage relation. The milk is deprived of its vitalizing and nutritious elements.” So little of such matters had come to my knowledge that all she meant was not comprehended. From what my instincts had taught me, and what had been seen in animal life, I had no thought that this relation ever was frequent, especially during child-bearing.
To this day the picture of that wan, pale baby is impressed upon my memory, its very emaciation making an eloquent plea for the rights of children. Soon after this, I heard H. C. Wright’s lecture upon “Marriage; its Duties and Responsibilities.” He urged men and women to transmit the best of themselves to their children, and to be certain that offspring were not deprived of vitality and strength by lustful indulgence. For the sake of the improvement and progress of posterity, the life of married people must be temperate. After this I read his “Marriage and Parentage,” and “Unwelcome Child,” with increased interest in this subject.
At that time the need of such lectures and books was not understood. In long years since, the agonizing cries of heart-broken, suffering women, the terrible death rate of little children have proven that in the marriage relation there is such a perversion of nature, such grievous wrongs committed that one needs a pen of fire to express the living, burning thoughts, and carry the conviction of truth into the very lives of men and women. Unless by some divine miracle, the eloquence of a thousand inspired pens cannot stay the floodtide of wrong and injustice now done to women and children under the cover of the marriage law.
Among animals, except in rare instance under domestication, the female admits the male in sexual embrace, only for procreation. Among some savage tribes this same rule has few exceptions. Is it not true that civilized people, boasting of their moral and religious codes, hold, teach and practice that sexual union shall occur in season and out of season, averring this to be the fulfillment of nature’s law?
Briefly consider different views upon this subject.
First. Those who hold that sexual intercourse is a “physical necessity” to man but not to woman.
Second. Those who believe the act is a love relation, mutually demanded and enjoyed by both sexes, and serving other purposes besides that of procreation.
Third. Those who claim the relation should never be entered into save for procreation.
Physicians and physiologists teach, and most men and women believe:
That sexual union is a necessity to man, while it is not to woman.