“Soon after the birth of my child, my husband insisted on his accustomed indulgence. Without any wish of my own, maternity was again forced upon me. I dared not attempt to get rid of the child, abortion seemed so cruel, so inhuman, unnatural, and repulsive. I resolved again, for my child’s sake, to do the best I could for it. Though I could not joyfully welcome, I resolved quietly to endure, its existence.
“After the birth of this child, I felt that I could have no more to share our poverty and to suffer the wrongs and trials of an unwelcome existence. I felt that I had rather die at once, and thus end my life and my power to be a mother together. My husband cast the entire care of the family on me. I had scarcely one hour to devote to my children. My husband still insisted on his gratification. I was the veriest slave alive. Life had lost its charms. The grave seemed my only refuge, and Death my only friend.
“In this state, known as it was to my husband, he thrust maternity upon me twice. I employed a doctor to kill my child, and in the destruction of it, in what should have been the vigor of my life, ended my power to be a mother. I was shorn of the brightest jewel of my Womanhood. I suffered, as woman alone can suffer, not only in body, but in bitter remorse and anguish of soul.
“All this I passed through, under the terrible, withering consciousness, that it was all done and suffered solely that the passion of my husband might have a momentary indulgence. Yet such had been my false religious and social education, that, in submitting my person to his passion, I did it with the honest conviction that, in marriage, my body became the property of my husband. He said so; all women to whom I applied for counsel, said it was my duty to submit, that husbands expected it, had a right to it, and must have this indulgence, whenever they were excited, or suffer; and that in this way alone could wives retain the love of their husbands. I had no alternative but silent, suffering submission to his passion, and then procure abortion, or leave him, and thus resign my children to the tender mercies of one with whom I could not live myself. Abortion was most repulsive to every feeling of my nature. It seemed degrading, and, at times, rendered me an object of loathing to myself.
“When my first-born was three months old, I had a desperate struggle for my personal liberty. My husband insisted on his right to subject my person to his passion, before my babe was two months old. I saw his conduct then in all its degrading and loathsome injustice. I pleaded, with tears and anguish, for my own and my child’s sake, to be spared; and had it not been for my helpless child, I should then have ended the struggle by bolting my legal bonds. For its sake, I submitted to that outrage, and to my own conscious degradation. For its sake, I concluded to take my chance in the world with other wives and mothers, who, as they assured me, and as I then knew, were all around me, subjected to like outrages, and driven to the degrading practice of abortion.
“But, even then, I saw and argued the justice of my personal rights in regard to Maternity, and the relation that leads to it, as strongly as you do now. I saw it all as clearly as you do. I was then, amid all the degrading influence that crushed me, true and just in my womanly intuitions. I insisted on my right to say when and under what circumstances I would accept of him the office of Maternity, and become the mother of his child. I insisted that it was for me to say when and how often I should subject myself to the liability of becoming a mother. But he became angry with me; claimed ownership over me; insisted that I, as a wife, was to submit to my husband, ‘in all things;’ threatened to leave me and my children, and declared I was not fit to be a wife. Fearing some fatal consequence to my child or to myself, being alone, destitute, and far from helpful friends, in the far West, and fearing that my little one would be left to want, I stifled all expressions of my honest convictions, and ever after kept my aversion and painful struggles in my own bosom.
“In every respect, so far as passional relations between myself and husband are concerned, I have ever felt myself to be a miserable and abject woman. I now see and feel it most deeply and painfully. If I was with a child in my arms, I was in constant dread of all personal contact with my husband, lest I should have a new maternity thrust upon me, and be obliged to wean one child before its time, to give place to another. In my misery, I have often cried out, ‘O God! is there no way out of this loathsome bondage?’
“It was not want of kindly feelings towards my husband that induced this state of mind, for I could and did endure every privation and want without an unkind feeling or word, and even cheerfully, for his sake. But every feeling of my soul did then, does now, and ever must, protest against the cruel and loathsome injustice of husbands towards their wives, manifested in imposing on them a maternity uncalled for by their own nature and most repulsive to it, and whose sufferings and responsibilities they are unprepared and unwilling to meet.
“Yours,
“—— ——.”