“Will man ever be pure, noble and strong enough to protect woman, in or out of legal marriage, against his own passion? Must woman always put herself on the defensive, to protect herself against man? Will man never see the fact as it is, that all that is manly, true, great and noble in his nature, must be preserved and perpetuated only by the protection of woman against being victimized to his sensual gratification? O man! thou art all noble and God-like, to the loving and trusting heart of woman! She longs to come to thee, to save thee, and to be saved by thee. But thou mayest be assured that thy heaven, in time and eternity, can be secured only by saving woman from prostitution. While she is regarded by thee as the means of sensual gratification, rather than as the vitalizing, redeeming power of thy manhood, she will bring desolation and death to thy soul, and thou to hers. To man, woman looks for strength. How she longs to rest in him,—how she longs to give herself to him in a self-abandoning trust,—and how she longs that he may ever be worthy such a trust, the heart of the true woman and wife alone can ever know. But when woman trusts and man proves weak, and betrays her longing and trusting heart, no words can express her sickening, crushing disappointment and anguish. Often do women prefer to die a lingering and loathsome death, rather than confess themselves mistaken and disappointed in those whom they have trusted.”
The following extract from a private letter speaks the thought and feeling of every true woman. Weigh well what the writer says of woman’s right to protect herself against the reckless passion of man. Also, what she says of woman’s power over man, and of man’s readiness to yield to that power, when woman has the courage to appeal to his love:
“I cannot conceive of a woman, who has willingly and joyfully received into her own being the germ of a new existence, with the noble design of rendering that existence happy, ever committing this foul deed [abortion]. The cause of it must always be, the previous submission to an unwelcome maternity. If this can be justified, if the laws of man and of God oblige woman thus to degrade and violate the sacredness of her own person, it follows that she, being thus outlawed, placed outside the protection of all law, human and divine, has a right to protect herself from further evil, and even avenge herself for the past, as she best can; and that whether by taking the life of her husband or of his child. Can this be denied as a necessary consequence? and does not the bare statement of it disprove the monstrous assertion that God, either by Nature or Revelation, has thus placed her at the disposal of man’s will? No living creature is created without some means of self-protection; and in woman, that weapon is Self-Respect.
“It makes my soul sick, even to a loathing of Humanity, to think of this unnatural deed, and its foul cause. Alas! men and women do not worship their own natures. ‘Let us eat and drink,’ they cry, ‘for to-morrow we die!’—‘Let us sacrifice the human to appease the brute.’
“Does not the crime of murder consist mainly in the fact, that every soul born on this planet has an inherent right to all the development it can receive in this, its birthplace, and when deprived of corporeal existence, is robbed of this right? If this be true then ante-natal murder of the same nature and character as post-natal murder. Yet for the one crime the criminal is accounted, by our judges, and by the sentiment of the public, to be worthy of death; whereas, these same judges, and this same public, incite to the commission of the other, by subjecting woman to an abhorred maternity.
“Where is the wrong? In the man, first of all. He it is who subjects the woman to this abhorred maternity, and for his own sensual gratification. For him there is no apology, save the miserable one that passion overcome love and reason, the animal triumphs over the man, the sensual over the spiritual.
“In the mind of the woman who allows herself to become thus basely subservient to her husband’s will, how loathsome is the memory of those progenitors who bequeath to the man a nature so mean, selfish, tyrannical and animal, and to the woman a nature so tamely, so ignobly subservient and unresisting! Where is the remedy? In the awakening of woman to this great evil. Woman must assert and maintain her rights in regard to maternity, ere any rational hope can be entertained for the future. I cannot believe that man would become the fierce, selfish tyrant he now is, if properly appealed to before his heart becomes hardened by indulgence,—that he who, in the general transactions of life, is just and honorable, would become the selfish despot at home, if the woman who is his wife fully respected her nature as woman, and her individual sacredness.
“Let woman, then, be appealed to. Let her ‘arise from the dust, and put on her beautiful garments,’ for then, and not till then, shall her light break forth as the morning, and Humanity become all glorious. But while woman, by law, custom, and religion, is made subservient to man’s sensual gratification, without regard to her feelings and wishes, while law, custom and religion bestow on man the right to inflict on woman a maternity whose suffering and responsibilities she is not prepared joyfully to welcome, and while woman, to gratify man’s sensualism, is subjected to the atrocious alternative of ante-natal murder, or of giving existence to children whom her inmost soul repels, there can be no hope of the regeneration and redemption, the elevation and happiness of the race, and of peopling the earth with nobler and more beautiful types of manhood and womanhood.”
How many husbands are unwilling to have their wives get knowledge as to their right to decide when they shall become mothers, or be subjected to the relation that leads to it! Let woman get light on this, if on no other subject, if she would be happy in her home. Slaveholders count him most guilty who attempts to teach their slaves their right to be free. So many husbands curse bitterly the man who would enlighten their wives in regard to Maternity, and the relation that leads to it. But true and earnest souls are pledged to spread light on this subject. Read the following:
“Married women are often as ignorant, and about as degraded, as to their rights and duties, respecting the function of Maternity and the relation that leads to it, as are the slaves of the South in regard to their rights. Many husbands are as unwilling that their wives should get light on these subjects, as are slaveholders that their slaves should be enlightened in regard to their condition. They must not be allowed to know that they are not morally bound to submit. They must have no will of their own; and by their weak subserviency, they even say to their husbands, ‘God thy law,—thou mine,’ as to Maternity and the relation that leads to it. How can they know that there is any other and nobler way, than to have children and complain, and complain and have children, and submit themselves to their husbands’ sensualism with entire servility and silence?