IS PAIN A NATURAL CONDITION OF LABOR?
I am here led to make a digression on the subject of pain. There are some nowadays who contend that labor is naturally a painless process, and that through the voluntary habits of the individual it is possible to make it so even at the present day.
I must humbly dissent from this doctrine. I am willing to admit, or, rather, I do emphatically affirm, that the safety of parturition, the ability to pass with comparative comfort through the period of pregnancy, and the recovery from childbirth, are very much under the influence of the voluntary habits of the individual, and may be modified to an almost indefinite extent. If I did not believe all this most fully, I would never have written these letters, and probably not have practiced the healing art. But all this is a very different thing from that of bringing forth a child without pain.
I do not care even if some of your sex who have borne children, too, should themselves tell me that they passed through labor without experiencing any suffering whatever. I could hardly trust their word if they should tell me so, because I know too well that they may deceive themselves, and that it is a matter of striking benevolence in the Creator, who has formed woman’s nature in such a way that she soon forgets the agony after it has passed. How many of you all to whom I address myself would ever consent to bring forth a second child, if there should always be present in your minds the consciousness of the agony, not to say the pain, the real agony, which labor actually cost you?
See, too, the animals which we hear so much about. Some will tell you that they do not suffer when they bring forth their young. But I say to you these pretended philosophers do not know of what they affirm. Take the healthiest animals—not the sickly, stall-fed ones of our cities, but those of the country—and such as never manifested any signs of sickness whatever; do they not suffer pain when they bring forth? I speak from a knowledge of the facts when I tell you they do. They sometimes even die in the process, and they always manifest signs of distress, even as a premonitory symptom when labor is about to come on. How, indeed, could there be such a displacement of living, vital parts as occurs in a labor without there being pain? As to danger, that is another thing.
I would, therefore, not have you carried away with that foolish notion, which some would instill into your minds, that labor can be without pain. I trust I have said and shall say some things in these pages which will go to encourage you somewhat in reference to childbirth; but all along my desire is to tell you the truth. It is better for you that you should know it, and for me that I should speak it. We ought never to be afraid of the truth.
But perhaps some of you are ready to ask, what is the meaning of that passage of Scripture which reads:
“Unto the woman God said, I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception; in sorrow shalt thou bring forth children; and thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee.”
I can tell you what I think it does not mean, which is, that the Almighty did not order that human beings should have no agency in regard to the pains and perils of childbirth. He did not say, that if a woman chooses, when pregnant, to go to balls, parties, theaters, and the like places, become excited, and, for example, dance, that she could not thus, of her own voluntary acts, bring on abortion or some worse ailment. He did not order, that if she will persist in drinking tea and coffee, that her nerves will not be injured thereby. And so of all other rules of health. If we obey God’s physiological laws, health will be better in proportion to the extent of that obedience; if we disobey them, we must inevitably suffer in consequence thereof. Nor is there any thing in the Word of God, when rightly understood, which at all conflicts with this doctrine.