“Alas for poor Humanity! ‘Let there be light,’ that man may know that the relation that leads to maternity can only be ennobled when its object is the creation of a new and glorious life; that his passional nature can only derive dignity and beauty from the control of love and reason; that otherwise, it is of the earth, earthy, and debases him below the level of the brute. ‘Let there be light,’ that woman, in whose soul resides the power, may say to this overwhelming flood of evil, ‘Here shall thy proud waves be stayed!’ The errors of a false religious education, bad laws, and bad customs, have, hitherto, formed some extenuation for this weak subserviency; but this ignorance has been tolerated full long, and now the great cry of God and Humanity goes forth calling for repentance,—that ‘a new heavens and a new earth may be created, wherein shall dwell righteousness.’”
Man has a heart, and that heart can be reached by the loving and earnest appeal of a true woman. Words, such as those contained in the above extract, will never be uttered in vain. They are the true oracles of Nature’s God, as revealed in the soul of the wife and the mother. Let the father hearken to the mother as she pleads, in behalf of her children, that they may not be cursed with an unwelcome existence. Let the husband listen to the prayer of his wife, that she may be spared a maternity whose responsibilities she is not prepared joyfully to assume. Humanity utters her indignant protest against man, when, to gratify his sensual passion, he perpetrates the greatest possible outrage against woman, as a wife and mother, and as a woman, by subjecting her to the necessity of cursing her child with an abhorred existence, or of killing it before it is born. Protestations of love and devotion must ever seem insulting and disgusting to a true woman, from a man who would thus recklessly inflict upon herself and her child this foul wrong. In vain does such a man prate of his regard for the purity and honor of woman, of his reverence for marriage and parentage, and of his desire for the elevation of our common humanity; his life, in the sacred privacy of home, is an insult to his wife, an outrage upon the mother of his children, an act of living injustice and cruelty to his offspring, and a crime of deepest infamy against all that is true, pure and noble in human nature.
Man will not always be thus heedless of the health and happiness of his wife; he will not always be thus unjust and inhuman to his innocent and unconscious children, by making them objects of dread, of loathing and cursing, to the very heart under whose pulsations they receive their ante-natal development. He will subject his manhood to the health and happiness of his wife and children; and in doing so, will receive the richest reward earth can bestow,—the perfect trust of a devoted wife, and the loving respect of a healthy, happy and joyous offspring.
H. C. W.
LETTER VII.
THE DREAD ALTERNATIVE—ANTE-NATAL MURDER, OR AN UNWELCOME CHILD.
Dear Friend:
The following experience of a woman, given in her own words, will make its appeal to all that is pure, manly and noble in manhood. It is the cry of anguish from woman’s riven heart to man, to save her from the agony and blighting curse of a maternity whose sufferings she is not prepared joyfully to meet, and from which her entire nature shrinks with dread and loathing; to save her from the revolting alternative of killing her child before it is born, or of giving life to one whose very existence is loathed by her. Several times, the crime of an undesired maternity had been perpetrated upon her by her husband, and each time the child had been killed by herself or by a doctor, before its birth. She was asked how she felt under these outrages, and what was the result on her physical, social and spiritual nature. The following is her answer:
“How did I feel? I felt that I was committing a damning sin. My soul shrank from the deed with intense horror and loathing. The remonstrances of a guilty conscience I could not silence. I had submitted to the relation in which maternity originates, thinking it my duty, as a wife, to do so whenever my husband demanded. I told him that my very soul shrank from maternity; that I was not yet prepared for its responsibilities and agonies, and begged of him not to impose that burden upon me till I could joyfully welcome it, which I felt that I should, in due time. But he heeded not my prayer. He insisted on the relation. Conception and maternity ensued.
“My soul died within me. An ever present loathing of the new life that was being developed within mine was in my heart. My own soul, and the God whose voice was heard within, repudiated its existence. I could not help the feeling. The spirit of murder, towards the unconscious child in embryo, was ever present to me; yet my soul shrank with horror from the deed. Shall I kill my child before its birth, or give existence to one whose birthright inheritance is a mother’s curse? was the question I found myself debating continually;—for my curse was on its very life.
“I consulted a woman, a friend in whom I trusted. I found that she had perpetrated that outrage on herself and on others. She told me it was not murder to kill a child any time before its birth. Of this she labored to convince me, and railed in the aid of her ‘family physician,’ to give force to her arguments. He argued that it was right and just for wives thus to protect themselves against the results of their husband’s sensualism,—told me that God and human laws would approve of killing children before they were born, rather than curse them with an undesired existence. My only trouble was, with God’s view of the case. I could not get rid of the feeling that it was an outrage on my body and soul, and on my unconscious babe. He argued that my child, at five months (which was the time), had no life, and where there was no life, no life could be taken. Though I determined to do the deed, or get the ‘family physician’ to do it, my womanly instincts, my reason, my conscience, my self-respect, my entire nature, revolted against my decision. My Womanhood rose up in withering condemnation. And, after the deed was done, I felt that I could never respect myself again; that I could never again appear in society; that if I did, all that was pure and true in manhood and womanhood would shrink from me as a polluted, disgusting object.