Fathers and Brethren:
As the daughter and sister of nine ministers of Jesus Christ you will allow me to address you by those endeared names; and also because there is an emergency that demands unusual measures.
This woman movement is one which is uniting by co-operating influences, all the antagonisms that are warring on the family state. Spiritualism, free-love, free divorce, the vicious indulgences consequent on unregulated civilization, the worldliness which tempts men and women to avoid large families, often by sinful methods, thus making the ignorant masses the chief supply of the future ruling majorities; and most powerful of all, the feeble constitution and poor health of women, causing them to dread maternity as—what it is fast becoming—an accumulation of mental and bodily tortures.
Add to this, that extreme fastidiousness which not only excludes needful instruction from the pulpit, but makes mothers shrink from learning and teaching those dangers which their daughters most need to know, and prevents medical men and even women physicians from uttering needful warnings.
I once said to a lady physician with an enormous practice, in reply to some of her statements, "why do you not call the mothers of this city together and tell them all this?" She replied "it is impossible—they would not hear me—I should have to nail the doors and windows to keep them—and if they did hear, they would not believe."
It is the women teachers of our common schools who must be instructed to become lecturers on health in all our school districts and teach mothers how to instruct children in all the laws of health and the dreadful penalties which in certain directions are but little known and now threaten the ruin of the rising generation. There is no duty more difficult than this; for it is one which if done properly saves from danger, and if improperly leads to it.
If the clergy of this nation will give their powerful influence to promote the aims of this work in modes they will more wisely devise than I can suggest, success will be ensured; and to them I appeal (as I used to do to a beloved father and as I often do to dear brothers,) to help me where my own strength and courage fail.
With christian love and respect,
Yours truly,
Catharine E. Beecher.