The unwelcome child

by Henry Clarke Wright

“The subject of an undesigned and undesired maternity,—how it affects the mother towards the child, towards the function of Maternity itself,—these are matters, on which, as a wife and a mother, and a friend of Human Progress, my mind has been deeply exercised since they were first presented to me. The delicate and hallowed beauty with which you invest maternity, and the relation that leads to it, renders it easy for me to impart to you my views on these subjects, while I feel instinctively repelled from any approach to them with most other persons, both men and women.

“The thoughts I have do not flow from my own experience. I have never given birth to a child not earnestly desired. Yet, being a woman and a mother, it seems to me no difficult matter to judge correctly as to what must necessarily be the emotions and effects produced by such a maternity.

“But I must express my earnest conviction, that any woman, any wife, who permits herself to be made the instrument of bringing into life a new existence, unwelcome to her own soul, must, in some degree, be wanting in that self-respect which is an inseparable accompaniment of, nay, an essential element in, true nobility of character. That woman must feel degraded before her own soul, who, for any cause, in or out of legal marriage, suffers herself to be made the means of such an outrage upon her innocent and helpless babe. Better, a thousand times, that she leave her legal husband at once and forever, than allow soul and body to be thus prostituted, and herself to be made accessory to a deed so unnatural and unjust as that of giving birth to a child whose existence is repudiated and loathed by her own heart.

“Public opinion, based on his superior physical strength and (hitherto) superior intellectual development, has accorded to man the dignity of lordship. Looking over the face of the earth, he says, ‘See all things for my use, even woman.’ And as the Bible, in many of its teachings, as these are explained, sanctions this arrogance, declaring that the ‘man was not made for the woman, but the woman for the man,’ she herself, the just authority of Nature being educated out of her, and the arbitrary authority of man educated into her, believes it her duty to yield implicit obedience to all the demands of the man to whom she has declared allegiance at the altar;—the altar, truly; for there she is frequently offered a propitiation to satisfy the demands of man’s unholy passion; and from henceforth this being, created with reason, conscience and intuitions of her own, and for her own guidance, believes it her highest duty to sacrifice all these to the authority and the licensed sensualism of the husband, for whose pleasure she was created, and to ‘obey even as Sarah obeyed Abraham, calling him Lord.’

“This much may be said to account for the fact that so many women, otherwise excellent and amiable, lend themselves to the commission of this great crime; a crime against themselves, against their children, against their husbands, against our great humanity. And while thus prostituting their persons according to law (made for this very end, and solely by those who prostitute them), they deceive themselves into the stupid belief that they are leading pure and virtuous lives, and look with scorn and contempt upon the poor sister who commits the same unnatural and revolting deed in an unlawful and less reputable manner.

“Human decrees and enactments can never alter or reverse human obligations. What is wrong without a license or commission from human government, is wrong with such a license. If an undesigned and undesired maternity be a dark and damning sin against the child, the mother, and humanity, against God, without the sanction of the Church, the State, and public opinion, it is a sin of an equally dark and damning character with such sanction. In every case where the act that leads to maternity would be a sin, a foul and monstrous crime, and the shame and infamy of one or both parents, without the sanction of human laws, it would be the same with such sanction, and in a legalized union. Those women, therefore, who for any cause, allow an undesired maternity to be imposed on them by men holding the legal relation of husbands, and permit themselves to be made the means of giving existence to children whom they do not want, in legal marriage, ought to be, and one day will be, regarded in the same light as those are who become mothers outside of wedlock. If it be wrong for a woman to become a mother, without the consent of Church and State and society, it is wrong for her to become a mother with such consent. If right with such consent, it is right without it. Whatever it is right to do with a civil, ecclesiastical or social license, it is right to do without it.

“If woman’s life be made a curse by the constant endurance of suffering, consequent upon a too-frequent maternity, the religious woman often endeavors to stifle the outcries and accusations of reason and intuition by the absurd plea that she ‘must have all the children whom it is God’s will to send.’ Occasionally, one is found weak enough, and wickedly fond enough, to say, as Miss Bremer, with contemptible silliness, makes one of her amiable characters in ‘The Home’ say, ‘that though she had such a large and rapidly increasing family, and her husband’s means of providing for it were somewhat limited, yet he never grumbled, and was always ready to welcome each new child as it came!’ Grumble, indeed! A husband ‘grumbling’ that his wife has conceived! A father ‘grumbling’ at the birth of a child! ‘Always ready to welcome each new child as it came!’—and this said by a wife of her husband, as the strongest testimony to his manliness and justice as a husband and father, and as the highest reason why she should love and honor him! What man so base, so ignoble, so fallen, and so deserving a dungeon or the gallows, as he who imparts the germ of a new life to his wife, to gratify his passion, and then ‘grumbles’ because a child is born, and thrusts it from him? Man can give no greater proof of the utter degradation and ruin of his moral nature. Yet not to grumble at a maternity of his own imposing, and not to repel and cast off the babe for whose undesired existence he is responsible, is Miss Bremer’s highest conception of manhood!

“But a false religious education is not the only reason why woman weakly and unrighteously yields herself to the base and brutal passion of her husband; for a passion, though all pure and ennobling when its demands are just and naturally answered, becomes most base and brutalizing to men and women, when indulged at the expense of the child, and contrary to the wishes of the wife and mother. As society is now constituted, she is his dependant. The laws make her subservient to his will, while she continues a wife, and all-pervading custom has, in great measure, deprived her of the dignity which an independent ability to engage in business for herself, outside the domestic circle, would confer.

“‘Can do is easily carried about,’ is a pithy old Scottish proverb; and this same ‘Can do’ is a good and sturdy staff of self-support, when a woman finds that the man on whom she fondly leaned would become to her, not a tower of strength and a refuge from the storm, but the oppressor to crush both soul and body, and make of her very Womanhood an unworthy thing. Let woman respect herself. She will gain nothing by submitting to wrong and outrage. No wife ever gained or perpetuated the love and respect of a husband, deserving the name, by yielding to his passion, merely to please him.

“It is the popular, but foolish and unthinking belief, that children owe great obligations to their parents for bringing them into life; but is not the contrary the fact, that parents are under the strongest possible obligations to their children to render that being good, wise, and happy, which they themselves have forced upon their child? Assuming this as self-evident, then is it clear that such existence should not be the result of blind, unthinking passion, but of careful, wise and loving design.