THE CRIME OF ABORTION.
From the moment of conception a new life commences; a new individual exists; another child is added to the family. The mother who deliberately sets about to destroy this life, either by want of care, or by taking drugs, or using instruments, commits as great a crime, is just as guilty, as if she strangled her new-born infant, or as if she snatched from her own breast her six-months' darling and dashed out its brains against the wall. Its blood is upon her head, and as sure as there is a God and a judgment, that blood will be required of her. The crime she commits is murder, child-murder,—the slaughter of a speechless, helpless being, whom it is her duty, beyond all things else, to cherish and preserve.
This crime is common; it is fearfully prevalent. Hundreds of persons are devoted to its perpetration. It is their trade. In nearly every village its ministers stretch out their bloody hands to lead the weak woman to suffering, remorse, and death. Those who submit to their treatment are not generally unmarried women who have lost their virtue, but the mothers of families, respectable Christian matrons, members of churches, and walking in the better classes of society.
We appeal to all such with earnest and with threatening words. If they have no feeling for the fruit of their womb, if maternal sentiment is so callous in their breasts, let them know that such produced abortions are the constant cause of violent and dangerous womb diseases, and frequently of early death; that they bring on mental weakness, and often insanity; that they are the most certain means to destroy domestic happiness which can be adopted. Better, far better, to bear a child every year for twenty years than to resort to such a wicked and injurious step; better to die, if needs be, in the pangs of childbirth, than to live with such a weight of sin on the conscience.
There is no need of either. By the moderation we have mentioned, it is in the power of any woman to avoid the evils of an excessive family, without injury and without criminality.
We feel obliged to speak in plain language of this hidden sin, because so many are ignorant that it is a sin. Only within a few years have those who take in charge the public morals spoken of it in such terms that this excuse of ignorance is no longer admissible.
Bishop Coxe, of New York, in a pastoral letter, the late Archbishop Spaulding, Catholic Primate of the United States, in an address at the close of a recent Provincial Council at Baltimore, the Old and New School Presbyterian Churches, at a meeting in Philadelphia, have all pronounced the severest judgments against those guilty of antenatal infanticide. Appeals through the press have been made by physicians of high standing, and by eminent divines, which should be in the hands of every one.
The chiefest difficulty hitherto has been, that while women were warned against the evils of abortion, they were offered no escape from the exhaustion and dangers of excessive child-bearing. This difficulty we have fully recognised and fairly met, and, we believe, in such a manner that neither the accuracy of our statements nor the purity of our motives can be doubted. Should our position be attacked, however, the medical man must know that in opposing our views, he opposes those of the most distinguished physicians in Europe and in America; and the theologian should be warned that, when a neglect of physical laws leads to moral evil, the only way to correct this evil is to remedy the neglect. In this case the neglect is over-production; the evil is abortion.
NATURE OF CONCEPTION.
The theories which have been advanced to explain the manner in which the human species is continued and reproduced are very numerous. Including the hypotheses of the ancient philosophers, some two hundred and fifty have been promulgated by the greatest thinkers of all times. The older ones do not deserve mention, as they are replete with absurdities. Such, for instance, is that of Pythagoras, which supposed that a vapor descended from the brain and formed the embryo. The Scythians therefore took blood from the veins behind the ears to produce impotence and sterility. Modern science has shown the total error of this and many other views formerly entertained on this subject. Has galvanism or electricity any share in the mysterious function? Some among the modern physiologists have supposed that there is an electrical or magnetic influence which effects generation. Even within a few months, Dr. Harvey L. Byrd, Professor of Obstetrics in the Medical Department of Washington University of Baltimore, has asserted that he has 'every reason for believing that fecundation or impregnation is always an electrical phenomenon;
... it results from the completion of an
electric circle,—the union of positive and negative electricities.' This, however, is not accepted by all as the dictum of modern science. Physiology has clearly established that the new being is the result of contact between the male element, an independent, living animal, on the one part, and the female element, a matured egg, on the other, involving the union of the contents of two peculiar cells. Without such contact, fecundation cannot take place.