With the realization of the moral responsibility of women the natural relations of life spring back to their due biological adjustment. Motherhood is restored to its natural sacredness. It becomes the concern of the woman herself, and not of society nor of any individual, to determine the conditions under which the child shall be conceived. Society is entitled to require that the father shall in every case acknowledge the fact of his paternity, but it must leave the chief responsibility for all the circumstances of child-production to the mother. That is the point of view which is now gaining ground in all civilized lands both in theory and in practice.[[311]]
E.g., E. Belfort Bax, Outspoken Essays, p. 6.
Such reasons are connected with communal welfare. "All immoral acts result in communal unhappiness, all moral acts in communal happiness," as Prof. A. Mathews remarks, "Science and Morality," Popular Science Monthly, March, 1909.