When women who have grown older in years and experience enter my office with their specious reasoning, women who have no excuse for not knowing the evil thing which they are advocating, I feel like denouncing them before the world as the enemies of God and womankind. Oh the shame that woman who should be the helper and inspiration in all good things should so lend her hand and heart to evil!
But the sin does not always stop with the murder. Many times her own life is a sacrifice to her sin, or if not this, she is doomed to invalidism the remainder of her days. Truly, as Mr. Sinclair says, “Many a woman is buried with Christian burial, over whose grave ought to be placed a tombstone with this inscription: “Here lies a suicide, assisted to her grave by her murderers—her husband, her female counsellors, and the conscienceless physician.””
There is no excuse whatever for the crime of abortion. The arguments are many that are made to ease the conscience, or palliate the sin, but not one of them will hold, before a tribunal of honest clean thinking people, with God on the bench.
It is wicked, say they, to bring so many children into the world that cannot be well taken care of; “I really have not the strength to take care of any more;” and they go on in their sinful practice until health is destroyed or life sacrificed. “I do not think that women should give their lives to bearing children, and have no time for mental improvement,” they say again, while they spend a great part of their time in devising means to prevent conception, or in worry, lest they may not succeed, while the little fragment of time and strength is given to the pursuit of “culture,” and at the age, when, had they borne their children and been joyful in training them, they would have been vigorous and strong for years of mental work and wide culture. At this very time because of what they have done they are pale broken-down women, with no strength or ambition left for nobler pursuits than groaning over their ill-health or seeking alleviation for their sufferings.
But their sin does not stop with themselves, but is written legibly upon the lives of the children, who, in spite of their earnest endeavor to the contrary, have stemmed the tide of evil, and come to maturity of term, if not of vigor.
A late writer in a Christian journal has said, “There are thousands of miserable objects in our insane asylums, hospitals, yea, in our jails, who may honestly complain, ‘from our mothers cometh our misery.’ The attempt to commit prenatal murder is frightfully common—as all women and physicians know—and where it does not kill, malformations, idiocy, and distorted moral powers are too often the results. For no one ever breaks into ‘the house of life,’ and is innocent or unpunished. Prenatal murder and self-murder walk hand in hand, crying to heaven as loudly as did the blood of Abel. And should these women personally seem to escape, yet there will come a day when God will ask them one terrible question, ‘Where are the children that I gave you?’”
Again they say, “There is no harm until there is life.” The moment conception takes place, that moment there is life; and whether the crime be committed in six hours, six weeks or six months, the sin is in all cases of equal enormity. Murder is in the intent, not in the act alone. When you intend to rid yourself of the little life if possible, you have committed murder as surely as if the murdered child lay dead in your arms, or it may chance live to denounce you with its disinherited life, if not with its words.
But I would not denounce woman alone, for the wrong does not lie wholly with her. Dr. Holbrook in an article on sanitary parentage, says: “That which polite language veils under the designation ‘social evil,’ and which desolates so many happy homes, and brings its quick harvest of misery, remorse, disease and death, chiefly lives because man does not know aright, does not truly reverence and honor woman, and keep in subjection that which may become one of the monster passions in his heart, and is thus continued from generation to generation.”
Often, we believe, are women driven to abortion, by maternity being thrust upon them, when they are already weakened by too frequent child-bearing.
A case of this kind came into my office a few days since. A bright, pretty little woman, scarcely more than a girl, sat down before me with the exclamation, “Doctor, I have missed my monthly period, and have come in to have you give me something to set me right.” “Are you married?” I questioned. “Yes,” she answered. “Do you not think that you may be pregnant?” I enquired. “Yes: I fear that I am,” she cried, with tears in her voice; “but I have one little one, not yet two years old, and a baby of eight months, and it does not seem that I can have another one now.” She was but twenty-two years old, and I could not help mentally calculating, what the number would be were she obliged to go on at this rate, until the child-bearing age was passed. My heart ached for the child mother; but I could say to her only this: “My dear, do you think it would be better for you to endanger your health, and perhaps take your life, and leave your two babies without a mother, than to go on patiently and have this baby, and live to care for them all?”