“Never has any man spoken a truer and more needed word than you have spoken, or held out a more helpful hand to woman, to enlighten her ignorance and to raise her from degradation, than you have done, in your work on ‘Marriage and Parentage.’ To me and my husband, that book has been as a message direct from God, to guide us in our most sacred relations in the sanctuary of our home. We wait anxiously for your work on ‘The Crime of an Undesigned and Undesired Maternity.’ We can ensure for it a wide circulation in this region; for the ante-natal history and education of human beings, in its bearing on their post-natal character and destiny, is becoming a subject of paramount interest in many true and earnest souls.”
The following testimony to the wide-spread practice of ante-natal murder is from one who has carefully noted the progress of this crime, and its dire effects on the physical and moral conditions of those who perpetrate it, and on their husbands and their homes:
“A friend of mine told me that she should have killed two of her children, ere they were born, had she known how. She tried, but could not succeed. The children whom she tried to murder were born alive, and are now living; but they are stamped with the spirit of revenge and murder. They struggled into life against the spirit of murder, and the maternal curse must remain upon their souls till eternity shall cast it out. This friend and myself made an estimate of the number of our near neighbors who, to our knowledge, had killed one or more of their children before they were born. Six, out of nine, had done the deed, or had procured the services of a ‘family physician’ to do it for them. They all justified the practice of ante-natal murder. A doctor in a neighboring village, who ever frowns upon this unnatural deed, assured me, recently, that he had been applied to by six different women in this little village, in one week, to murder their children before birth. Some of these women were the most fashionable, wealthy and respected women of the town, and two of them were church-members. They all insisted it was less criminal to kill children before they were born, than to curse them with an unwelcome existence.
“My husband and I have done what we could to circulate your work on ‘Marriage and Parentage’ in this region, and, already, it has brought comfort to many homes where happiness had been well-nigh wrecked by the unnatural demands of husbands, and by their imposing maternity on their wives when they were unprepared to meet the consequent suffering.”
The following shows how common, in cities, is the practice of ante-natal murder. What a testimony against husbands who impose on their wives maternity, without design, and contrary to their own wishes, and the wishes of their wives!
“A physician in a neighboring city told me that it was very common, among the more fashionable and wealthy among whom he practised, for husbands, who wished to have their wives always ready for society, to bring them to him and offer large sums of money to induce him to procure abortion, and to prevent conception. Invariably, those who practise this outrage on themselves lose their health, become low-spirited, feel humbled and prostituted, and are made irritable, complaining, nervous invalids for life, and wholly incapacitated for the enjoyments of society. I know many who practise this foul crime. Those who do it generally lose their self-respect, become ashamed of their womanhood, and shrink away from society, conscious that they deserve to be shunned or pitied, by all that is pure and noble. O! why, why do husbands impose on their wives an alternative so horrible? Why do women ever submit to a relation that subjects them to the possibility of a maternity, whose sufferings they are not prepared to meet? They had better starve, better die!
“Yet, in my ignorance, to please my husband, and to escape the agonies of an undesired maternity, have I allowed this most unnatural outrage to be perpetrated upon myself and my unborn children. I know the agony of soul, and the conscious shame and degradation woman feels, when, having allowed her husband to impose on her a maternity which her soul abhorred, she resorts to ante-natal murder to avoid giving birth to a child she does not want. I know no woman can practise this outrage on herself, or allow another to practise it upon her, without injury to body and soul. No woman, after doing this deed, can stand before her own soul, or before her fellow-beings, as she did before.
“The unwelcome child!—maternity, abhorred by the mother and without design by the father!—you call this ‘THE CRIME OF EARTH!’ It is. Lay it open to the eyes of all, in its bearing on the purity and happiness of home, and on the character and destiny of the race. ‘Let there be light!’ In the name of God and humanity, and by all that is pure and lovely in man or woman, and by all that is sacred and dear in the relation of mother and child, ‘Let there be light!’”
The following extract is from a wife and mother, who, with her husband, is laboring earnestly and efficiently to elevate the human type. They are ever active to surround themselves and their children with knowledge, with just, pure and ennobling views and principles in regard to marriage and parentage. They think this the only way to save their sons and daughters from the deep wretchedness and degradation of inharmonious conjugal relations, from polluted homes, and from the crime of giving existence to children they do not want. Mark! the woman, whose modesty is shocked at every effort, however truthful, earnest and delicate it may be, to enlighten husbands and wives in regard to the natural laws designed to govern Maternity, and the relation that leads to it, does not feel at all shocked by ante-natal murder. She can even justify herself in doing this most foul and monstrous deed:—
“When you lectured in this place, on ‘The Unwelcome Child,’ one lady went out of the house, affecting to be greatly shocked by what you said. Yet, that same woman who went out muttering curses on you, for warning husbands against imposing an undesired maternity on their wives, has, to my knowledge, had such a loathed and wretched burden thrust upon her twice, in two years, and each time has killed her child before it was born. Another lady, my near neighbor, who thinks such subjects should never be agitated, publicly, has three times, within so many years, committed the crime of ante-natal murder. The first child was seven months old when she killed it. She told me this herself. She is now but twenty-four years old. She has one living child, and this must suffer for life, from the outrages perpetrated upon it by the mother, ere its birth. She says she cannot, and will not, have any more children yet. She says her husband insists on his gratification, and she cannot prevent conception, and has no alternative but to kill the children before they are born, or give existence to those whom her soul repels, and thus entail on them a mother’s curse. She justifies herself by saying, it is no greater sin against the child, against herself, against society, and against humanity, for a mother to kill her child before it is born, than to give birth to it when her own heart loathes its existence.