In many cases, such at least is judged by the writer from his own observation, the abortion is not merely advised, but induced by some female friend, especially by one who has herself undergone, in her own person, the crime; perhaps without appreciable evil result,—but this is not necessarily the case, for even where such result is present and plainly in consequence, its connection with the true cause is frequently unsuspected or disbelieved.
It has been said that misery loves companionship; this is nowhere more manifest than in the histories of criminal abortion. In more than one instance, from my own experience, has a lady of acknowledged respectability, who had herself suffered abortion, induced it upon several of her friends, thus perhaps endeavoring to persuade an uneasy conscience that by making an act common, it becomes right. Such ladies boast to each other of the impunity with which they have aborted, as they do of their expenditures, of their dress, of their success in society. There is a fashion in this, as in all other female customs, good and bad. The wretch whose account with the Almighty is heaviest with guilt, too often becomes a heroine. So true is the case, that the woman who dares at the present day publicly or privately to acknowledge it the holiest duty of her sex to bring forth living children, “that first, highest, and in earlier times almost universal lot,”[131] is worthy, and should receive, the highest admiration and praise.
The ease with which an accomplice is procured, provided the idea originates with the victim herself, and is not suggested by another, is found among nurses to be greatly increased. We separate them as a class from midwives and female physicians, with whom, though in this country not generally acknowledged or thought identical, they not unfrequently aim to be confounded. They are usually, and rightly, thought more familiar with the laws of health and disease, than the generality of their sex; they are, if doing their duty in his sight, seen to be treated with respect by the physician; they are commonly of mature age, supposed discreet, wise, and to keep their own counsel; they have had opportunities of gaining the confidence of the mother; many of them have themselves borne families. They are therefore approached with less hesitation, and are not always found proof against an offered fee.
What we have said of nurses applies with increased pertinency to female physicians and midwives. These make it their claim, in rivalry of the male physician, that their schools and their practice are, like his, founded on those abroad, especially of Paris. Tardieu shows, in a total of 32 cases occurring in that city and collected by himself, that in 21—no less than 66 per cent., or two-thirds of the whole number reported—the crime was perpetrated by midwives.[132] This class frequently cause abortion openly and without disguise. They claim a right to use instruments, and to decide on the necessity and consequent justifiability of any operation they may perform. Where they establish private hospitals, professedly for lying-in women or not, their chances, previously great, of committing this crime and infanticide with impunity, become more than doubled. It has been found necessary in France for the police to exercise rigid surveillance over these establishments. In one instance, occurring at Grenoble, it was proved that within three years there had happened in the house thirty-one still-births at the full time, or deaths just after birth, and that the abortions and miscarriages had been almost innumerable.[133] In another case, to conceal the evidence of these truly corpora delicti, and to evade the law against secret burials, the midwife had established an understanding and a current account with an undertaker, who was accustomed to smuggle her fœtuses into his coffins, by the side of the corpses confided to him for burial. In still other cases, the victims are kept on hand, preserved in jars; private collections vieing in extent with those of legalized obstetric museums.
By these remarks we would not be supposed endeavoring to excite prejudice against female physicians and midwives, as such, or advocating their suppression. We are now merely considering this crime of abortion, in relation to which they are peculiarly and unfortunately situated. At present everything favors their committing the crime; their relations to women at large, their immunities in practice, the profit of this trade, the difficulty, especially from the fact that they are women, of insuring their conviction. Let better laws be enforced, and let public opinion be enlightened concerning the guilt of abortion, and the influence for evil of this class of offenders will in great measure be done away with.
Of male abortionists we have less to say. Their number is fewer abroad, bearing the proportion, as we have seen, of but one to every four, and their liability of being applied to, or consulted, is slight in comparison.
Husbands, though generally knowing to the offence of their wives, and often counselling it, probably but seldom attempt its commission themselves; yet instances of this do undoubtedly occur. In but a sixteenth of the cases reported by Tardieu, was any compulsory violence exerted over women by their husbands.
Druggists and professed abortionists are accountable for the greater number of the cases of the crime attributable to men. The latter class, though proportionally rare, yet abound in every city, and take all means of making themselves known. A knowledge of their alleged specifics, against the use of which, “at certain times,” the public are “earnestly cautioned,” etc. etc., is brought home to all our women, no matter how purely minded, and despite every care to the contrary, through the medium of the daily press; few papers, however professedly respectable or religious, proving able to refuse the bribe.
Druggists, as a class, are little more than the confessed agents of these villains. Even should they not directly recommend their nostrums, as, however, is frequently the case, they almost universally keep them on sale, labelled to catch the eye, and placarded on their walls. Like the publishers and vendors of obscene literature, they conceive they are not to blame for supplying a public demand, however much they themselves may have done toward its creation.
And in this connection we must again allude to the guilt of the public press, which has proved itself so constantly and so dangerously an accessory to the crime. It would be thought that in Massachusetts, for instance, a statute like the following might do something to check this license:[134]