“But the husband had no thought of restraining his passion, and insisted on its gratification, though maternity should ensue. In a few months, maternity was again imposed upon her. She has no power of endurance. He and she again wished the child to be destroyed, and it was, by the same doctor. With all this dreadful suffering and anguish of his wife, he insisted on his gratification. He had no higher conception of marriage, than as a means of mere sensual indulgence. To own her body, and use it for his gratification, he deemed his right as a husband. She regards maternity with repulsion, and the relation that leads to it; still, like most women, she thinks it a great misfortune that husbands cannot gratify their sensualism without imposing on their wives the necessity of abortion, or of giving birth to children they do not want, and she lives in constant fear of losing the affection of her husband, if she does not quietly yield to his passion.
“As to her husband, she really thought he could not control himself without great injury. He had convinced her that the laws of God and man gave him the right to that indulgence with his legal wife as often as he desired, and if conception ensued, it was no fault of his; that he was blameless, as to any wrong done. I could not but feel disgusted and horrified, to see all that was lovely and good in my child thus sacrificed to a man’s low sensualism. When a husband thus deliberately treats his wife as a mere means of sensual gratification, it blunts all that is refined and noble in her, and makes him an object of disgust to her. And she, in her nature, must exercise the love-principle or starve, and she wastes it on others more congenial, who will respect her womanly nature. Often this is the cause of her throwing herself into temptation, and becoming a victim of the base passions of those who are ever on the watch for such. Thus she is driven, step by step, to utter prostitution,—all from being made the slave to the sensual passion of the husband. Had she had a spiritually-minded and noble husband, or the courage to assert her rights, her home would have been her heaven, and her progress and improvement, not her degradation and ruin, the law of his life.”
Read the following. It must be an inhuman and monstrous religion which can countenance a crime so unnatural as enforced maternity, or ante-natal murder:—
“Those among us who are members of our churches, and are counted most exemplary patterns of purity and piety, to my certain knowledge, practise ante-natal murder, and they justify themselves by saying, ‘It would be a greater sin against children to entail on them the curse of an abhorred existence, than to kill them before they are born!’ These pious women affected to be greatly shocked, when, in your lectures here, you appealed to their husbands to control their passions, and spoke of the crime of enforcing on women a maternity whose responsibilities and sufferings they were not prepared joyfully to welcome. But Nature is ever true to herself. No matter who they are that perpetrate this outrage, whether rich or poor, high or low, pious or impious, whether in the church or out of it, they become weakly, and incurably diseased; their constitutions soon break down under this abuse, and they pass away by consumption, or some nameless, wasting disease, and their death is, by most people, attributed to a ‘wise and good Providence.’ The husbands, the real murderers, are pitied, and soon comforted by taking other wives, only to kill them in the same way. How can a woman feel proud of the nature God has given her, after thus abusing it? She cannot. She must feel in her soul that she is degraded, and her very existence becomes a loathing to herself. Who drives her to this inhuman deed?—who, indeed, but the very husband to whom she so fondly looked for protection from all harm?”
Dear Friend,—The following positions seem to me to be clearly sustained:
1. That it is a crime of the deepest dye, for a husband to impose on his wife, without design, a maternity whose responsibilities and sufferings she cannot joyfully endure.
2. That it is a sin for a husband to urge his wife to submit to a relation which may result in an undesigned and undesired maternity.
3. That no wife can stand proud and stainless before her own soul, who allows herself to come into a relation with her husband which may entail on her the curse of an unwelcome maternity, and reduce her to the revolting alternative of ante-natal murder, or of giving birth to a child whose existence is abhorrent to her soul.
May not every child, in justice, demand of its parents, as a birthright inheritance, (1) a healthy body, free from all tendency to disease; (2) a healthy soul, free from all tendencies to idiocy, and insanity of intellect or of heart; (3) a designed existence, the result of a wise and tender forethought, and not of blind, impetuous, selfish, sensual passion; (4) a love origin, rather than a mere sensual, animal origin; and (5) a joyous welcome into life? As you cast your little ones afloat on the ocean of eternal being, be careful to secure to them this outfit; then may you hope to see them bravely and successfully outride the storms of life, and enter into a true and endless rest. But what hope is there for these poor, diseased, suffering little ones, the offspring of a loathed and hated maternity, whose very existence, ere they were born, was made accursed by the mothers that bore them, and by the fathers, whose only thought or aim in the act in which they originated was mere sensual gratification? God pity these poor, unwelcome ones! No earthly parents welcome them into life with loving smiles. In whose warm, loving bosom can they be tenderly cherished? To whom can they look for love and sympathy? Again I say, God pity these poor, unwelcome children!
That your home may never be cursed by an undesigned and undesired maternity, or by an unwelcome child, is the anxious wish of