“She is one of a large class, who are thus trying to reconcile themselves to ante-natal murder. Still, she feels degraded, as all must who do this deed. They are degraded. A deed so unnatural and so cruel can never be perpetrated without deep injury to the moral nature of all concerned. The spirit that would kill a child before birth, would kill it after; the spirit that would commit ante-natal murder, would commit post-natal murder. But what shall be said of the husband who subjects his wife to this fearful alternative? Can man do a deed meaner, more selfish, more satanic?”
The organic and constitutional tendencies of those who are born are fixed. It may take a mighty effort to correct their birthright tendencies to disease and to crime. Thousands say, as the writer of the following extract says,—“We were lamentably ignorant of the natural laws of Parentage when we married. Would that light had come to us sooner. But we will not allow the happiness of our children, and our children’s children, to be wrecked for want of knowledge.” The following is the testimony of a true and earnest woman, and loving and happy wife and mother:—
“Before your visit to this place to lecture on ‘The Ante-Natal History of the Human Being, and its influence on his Post-Natal Character and Destiny, in the body and out of it,’ my husband and myself had talked over the subject of Marriage and Parentage a great deal; but we never had had it presented to our minds in so strong and clear a light before.
“When I was married, I was most lamentably ignorant of the laws of my nature, especially of those designed to govern Maternity. But my husband, in regard to maternity, and the relation that leads to it, is a most kind and considerate man, and I love and honor him all the more for it. I wish your book on ‘Marriage and Parentage’ had fallen into our hands before our children were born; we might have given them more loving hearts, and nobler natures, in body and soul, by understanding better how surrounding influences affect us before birth. But I am thankful for my sake, and for my children’s sake, and for the sake of the mothers that are to come after us, that your views are being so widely made known through your writings and your lectures. If mothers better understand the laws of Nature designed to govern maternity, and the relation in which it originates, they will be more careful of themselves, for sake of their children.
“I have heard many mothers express their thankfulness for your visit and your conversations and lectures here. You have given hope and gladness to many anxious and despairing hearts. The mother of six little ones, and who is about to add another to the number, said to me, ‘Such instruction is exactly what men and women need.’ I felt sorry for her; yet not so sorry for her as for the unborn babe; for I know its existence is most unwelcome to the mother.
“When I think of the great and good work in which you are engaged, my heart blesses you, and bids you God-speed, for it is a subject of the deepest interest to me as a wife and mother. Before this question of Maternity, and the relation that leads to it, so far as the character and destiny of the race are concerned, in this and in the future state, all others sink into insignificance. It is most painful to hear woman, in her vanity, her shallowness, and intellectual, social and moral debasement, array herself against the only movement that ever can raise her to a true estimate of herself as the mother of the race. Till the right is conceded to her to determine for herself when, how often, and under what conditions she shall be a mother, or be subject to the relation that leads to maternity, woman can never become the true and proud mother of a healthy, beautiful and noble offspring. While she is a mother from necessity rather than from choice, she must feel herself an abject, degraded being, and her children must partake of her degradation. My husband and myself bid you God-speed! Our hearts are with you.”
The following fact was communicated by a wife and mother, as having occurred under her own observation, and in reference to her own daughter. Let every father and mother read this, and see to what extremities their daughters are often driven, to save themselves from a maternity whose sufferings they are not prepared to endure:—
“My only daughter was married to a warm-hearted, impulsive young man of twenty, when she was but sixteen. I besought him not to marry her to gratify his passions, and endeavored to set before him and her the certain consequences of a union formed for mere sensual purposes. She was, and is, an innocent, artless, and frail creature. She was in poor health, and I knew that absence from him preyed upon the life of her body and soul. They married, and he took her to a distant western State.
“In about four months, she came home to me, by his consent, a haggard, emaciated wreck of a woman. The first moment she saw me alone, she said to me, ‘Mother, they say I am about to become a mother, and my husband wished me to come to you, to see if you could not prevent it.’ I told her it was impossible; she was so feeble, that the effort to kill the child would kill her. She wept, and prayed me to save her from the suffering and anguish of child-birth. ‘I have,’ said she, ‘the most loathsome and horrible feelings about it. I think it would be a greater sin to give birth to a child, with the feelings I now have towards it, than to kill it before it is born. The very thought of giving birth to a child fills my soul with deadly enmity. My constant prayer is, that the child may be destroyed. I would rather die with it, than to give it birth under such circumstances. What will the child be, after it is born, if I give birth to it with the feelings I now have, and which I cannot help?’
“I earnestly tried to dissuade her from destroying it for several days; but she became so desperate, that I feared she would kill herself, and knew that if the child was developed and born, under such a state of mind in the mother, it must inevitably be a desperado, or a fugitive and vagabond on the earth. She had not one feeling of natural desire for her child, but only sought its death. I took her to a doctor, noted for his ante-natal murders, and he advised that the child should be killed,—and he killed it. Her husband came after her, and was thankful the deed had been done.