The unwelcome child

by Henry Clarke Wright

“I tried to cast the blame on my husband, who had imposed the necessity upon me. I tried to feel that the outrage and the guilt were all his own; that, had he heeded my prayer, and dealt justly by me, I should never have been driven to the dread alternative of ante-natal murder, or of giving birth to a child I did not want. But I saw and felt, that however great the wrong he had done to me, the fact still remained,—my nature was outraged, if not by my consent, yet by my sufferance. I knew I could have saved myself from maternity, had I been resolute to do so; and that, having submitted to the relation in which it originated, I had no right to add to the outrage by killing my child. I felt myself to be a crushed, prostituted, abandoned woman. Can any apology be offered for a woman who commits the crime of ante-natal murder, after she has voluntarily yielded to the relation that leads to maternity?

“Maternity, with its prospective agonies and its abhorred responsibilities (for I did not yet call for a child), was again thrust upon me in a few months; but I shrunk from destroying my child again. I gave birth to two living children. Then my soul rebelled against having more; but my husband was deaf to my prayers and my tears, though he himself was opposed to my having any more children, and insisted it was my fault if I did, though he persisted in his right to his sensual indulgence. How could I avoid having more children, when he was continually demanding of me the relation which naturally leads to offspring? ‘Kill them,’ was his reply, ‘before they are born, or do something to prevent conception!’

“His injustice and heartless selfishness cut me to the quick,—stung my very soul. ‘This is the man,’ I said to myself, ‘who has promised to love, cherish, and protect me; who expects me to love him tenderly and evermore; whom I have promised to love till death separates us; and yet, this is the man who, without regard to my wishes and conditions, insists on his right to gratify his passion, though at the expense of my body and soul!’ My soul rose in rebellion against him. It became evident to me, that the gratification of his passion was his only object in seeking me as a wife; that this was the only claim he had upon me, or wished to have, and that he had no higher idea of marriage than as a means of licensed, reputable indulgence.

“I became desperate. I could not leave my children. I knew if I left him, I could give no reason for the step, except my aversion to having maternity thrust upon me in defiance of the demands of my own nature, and I knew that all would condemn me, if I left him to escape from such an outrage, as this was not considered a wrong to me, but his right. Every feeling of my soul revolted against his taking possession of my person, without my consent, to blight and curse my body and soul to gratify his animal nature.

“I came to the conclusion to stand by my own rights, and defend my person against his sensualism. I told him, candidly, how I felt, and that I must protect myself, in this respect, for he would not. I told him I was living daily in deadly fear of his passion, and of maternity; that the relation in which it resulted had become repulsive to me, and that he had brought me to view myself as a loathed, abject and prostituted woman. His wrath was roused; and finally, from fear of breaking up my family and having my helpless living children taken from me, I submitted to a hell which had no mitigation, until separation gave it to me.

“In my intercourse with men, I have found few who did not view marriage and a wife as my husband did, as a mere means of sensual gratification. Companionship, intellectual, social, and spiritual growth, and elevation, they think little of, in connection with a wife. They see no soul, no God, in the wife; only the mere animal, to administer to the brute in them.”

In the presence of a just and pure God, and before the laws of Nature that are designed to govern all conjugal relations, does marriage give to the husband any right over the person of the wife, or to the wife any rights over the person of the husband, which neither had before? Has a husband any more right to demand of his wife the surrender of her person to his passion, than he has to demand that surrender of any other woman? True marriage creates necessities in each, and gives vitality and intensity to wants in each, which the presence, the love and companionship of the other can supply; but a pure conjugal love creates no rights, and never thinks or talks of rights over the property, the body, or the soul of the loved one. Indeed, a true man, whose soul is filled with a holy conjugal love for a woman, would scorn and loathe any personal caresses or surrender from her, when he knew she gave them merely from a sense of duty, and only because she believed he had a right to them. A man must be shorn of all true manliness, and become utterly debased and prostituted, before he can, in or out of legal marriage, accept the personal surrender of a woman to his passion, when he knows the surrender is made solely to please him, or from some false idea of duty. However tenderly, truly and devotedly a man may love a woman, she is not, therefore, under obligations to receive any expressions from him, except such as her own necessities demand. Whatever manifestations of yourself you would make to your wife, before offering them, create in her the necessity of demanding and of receiving them. If your nature prompts you to reveal yourself to her in the relation that leads to maternity control yourself, and be sternly true to yourself, to your wife, and your child that may ensue, until, by all other loving and endearing manifestations, you have created in her nature an earnest call for maternity. Then would she joyfully accept of you the germ of a new life, and, for the sake of her husband and her child, consecrate all the energies of her soul to its true development.

Read the following. The extract is from a letter written by one who has proudly and nobly filled the stations of a wife and a mother, and whose children and grandchildren surround her and crown her life with tenderest love and respect. She has seen many of the companions of her girlhood victimized, and literally offered up on the altar of sensualism, in legal marriage. Their husbands demanded passional gratification as their right, irrespective of consequences to wife or children, and they submitted as a duty. Their career was short, in many cases, and in others, they live but wrecks of their former selves. A relation that should have ennobled and saved them, has crushed them to death:

“It has often been a matter of wonder to me that men should, so heedlessly, and so injuriously to themselves, their wives, and children, and their homes, demand at once, as soon as they get legal possession of their wives, the gratification of a passion, which, when indulged merely for the sake of the gratification of the moment, must end in the destruction of all that is beautiful, noble, and divine, in man or woman. I have often felt that I would give the world for a friendship with man that should show no impurity in its bearing, and for a conjugal relation that would, at all times, heartily and practically recognize the right of the wife to decide for herself when, how often, and under what auspices, she should be a mother, or enter into the relation that leads to maternity.

“It is often said in my hearing, by women, that a woman who is not willing to submit her person to the passion of her husband, whenever he shall demand, is not fit to be a wife; and if she becomes so, and her husband forsakes her for other women, and neglects his children, he is to be pitied, and the wife condemned and held responsible for all the results. The law gives the husband cause for divorce if the wife persists in withholding her person from his embrace, which, when thus thrust upon her against her wishes, becomes loathsome and damnable. The community of women generally endorse this state of things, and are educated to believe that God gave man such fierce passions that he cannot control them; that they must be gratified whenever excited, though at the expense of woman’s health and happiness and the happiness of her children.