“The act in which the child originates is performed, often, solely for the momentary gratification of one or both parents. No thought for the welfare, the physical, mental and spiritual organization and tendencies of the child that may ensue, is entertained. No careful and anxious forethought for the character and destiny of the child is exercised, but the gratification of mere animal passion is the sole object sought. The child comes into being undesigned by the father and undesired by the mother,—the offspring of reckless, selfish, sensual lust, and not of tender, self-forgetting, noble love. How grievous the wrong done by the father to the mother, and by the mother to herself, and by both to the child who is thus thrust into the world by violence! What hope can exist for such a child? The felon’s doom was written on his soul before he was born. His parents consigned him to the dungeon or the gallows ere he drew the breath of life.
“The woman who, in youth, is flattered and caressed for the charms of her person, the sweetness of her temper, and the goodness of her heart, when married to a man who thus regards her as but the instrument of his pleasure, soon loses the charms for which she was caressed, and, while the husband is in his prime, she enters upon a premature old age; her physical strength exhausted by the almost constant suffering and agony attendant upon giving existence to those poor, unwelcome ones,—her beauty faded, her temper soured, her whole soul embittered by a consciousness of her hard lot, and her mental nature stunted in its growth,—for what leisure has she to attend to the wants of her own spirit, while her energies are taxed to the utmost with the care of her living children, who are solely dependent on her, and she preparing to add another to the number? How can she fill the treasure-house of her own soul with ‘things new and old,’ under all these adverse circumstances, and while the present physical wants of her little ones are constantly clamoring, ‘Give! give!’ Does not reason, does not justice, demand for woman that she have full opportunity for the development of her own Womanhood, soul, body, and spirit? Has not she, as an individual child of God and member of the human family, a right to this? Does not the well-being of such children as she may righteously bring into existence loudly call for a full and practical recognition, on the part of every husband and every man, of her right to decide for herself when, how often, and under what circumstances, she shall assume the office of Maternity, or be subjected to the relation that may issue in maternity? Does not the happiness, the best interest of the husband, require it? Does not Humanity itself demand it?
“And how must that woman, in whose soul the theory of passive obedience has not wholly eradicated nature, regard the husband who causes her thus to curse ‘the day wherein she was born’ a woman? In her inmost soul, she must look upon him as the half-enlightened slave looks upon his master, and bitterly reproach him for victimizing her to his own base passion, and for his own short-lived gratification, irrespective of the woful consequences to her whom he has sworn to cherish, honor and protect. And justly does she thus regard him. No wife can love and honor such a husband. He is to her what the executioner is to the victim, or the slaveholder to his crushed and outraged slaves. She cannot but loathe him.
“Can love do any injury to its object? Must not the wife become alienated from the husband, who, instead of cherishing her health and beauty, and seeking her happiness, subjects her to the loss of all these, and instead of honoring, basely enslaves her to his own infamous passion?—who, instead of protecting from evil, exposes her to sickness, sorrow and death, not in accordance with her own free will, her own glad choice, in pursuit of an object worthy and great enough to inspire hope, courage and strength to meet the coming suffering, and the attainment of which shall amply compensate, and cause her ‘to remember no more the anguish, for joy’ that a new life is given unto her, but simply and solely that his own mean, selfish, animal nature may find present satisfaction? Deserves such a man the blessings of a home of love and harmony, the devotion of wife and little ones? Alas! no; he has planted only curses, and ‘whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.’
“Must not such a wife, too, regard the creative function in both herself and husband with loathing and abhorrence? And did not the power of refusing this unwelcome maternity reside within herself, who could blame her for reproaching even the great Creator for so endowing her with a capacity for unremunerative suffering? And what must be the atmosphere of that house (I will not dignify it by the sacred name of home), where the wife and mother regards her own nature as degraded,—her husband the tyrant who degrades, and her children the fruits of this degradation? Is that house a fit nursery for the germs of a noble Humanity? Do not plants there take root which cumber the earth, and, in their turn, fill it anew with those briers and thorns of human kind, which render its habitations places of cursing and bitterness?
“Alas for the poor child of such a parentage! Receiving his very being by a base act of the father, nourished until birth underneath the heart of the mother, whose whole nature protests against its existence, feeding upon her bitterness, hatred, and sense of humiliation, the gall and wormwood of her soul infused into its young being, coming at last into the world destitute of the inheritance of love,—the inheritance justly his own,—where shall be the resting-place of that child’s soul? Around what can it lovingly cling? Even its own mother regards it as an unwelcome intruder; in whose loving bosom shall it be tenderly nurtured?
“Perhaps the mother who bore him used her best endeavor to cut short his earthly existence ere he saw the light; and, failing in this, when ushered into the world, grudges him the care and sustenance necessary to sustain that existence. Or if, as is more frequently the fact, with the actual presence of the helpless innocent in her bosom, somewhat of the mother’s heart awakens into life, it is not that rich, overflowing life of love which pours the wealth and fulness of her own being into his. She cares for him as the animal cares for its young in its utter helplessness; and then the weary woman, with many other children about her, and preparing for a new maternity, thrusts him from her as soon as possible, and the little yearling must ‘tak the stirk’s sta’ (the stall of the yearling calf). What can the poor, unwelcome child become? How small are his chances for a virtuous life! If he thinks God has so created him, well may he plead with poor Burns—
‘Thou knowest thou hast formed me
With passions wild and strong.’
‘Can a bitter fountain send forth sweet water?’ ‘Where shall I get them?’ was the reply of a criminal to Jonathan Edwards, who told him he must have better thoughts.