The unwelcome child

The following experience of a woman, given in her own words, will make its appeal to all that is pure, manly and noble in manhood. It is the cry of anguish from woman’s riven heart to man, to save her from the agony and blighting curse of a maternity whose sufferings she is not prepared joyfully to meet, and from which her entire nature shrinks with dread and loathing; to save her from the revolting alternative of killing her child before it is born, or of giving life to one whose very existence is loathed by her. Several times, the crime of an undesired maternity had been perpetrated upon her by her husband, and each time the child had been killed by herself or by a doctor, before its birth. She was asked how she felt under these outrages, and what was the result on her physical, social and spiritual nature. The following is her answer:

“How did I feel? I felt that I was committing a damning sin. My soul shrank from the deed with intense horror and loathing. The remonstrances of a guilty conscience I could not silence. I had submitted to the relation in which maternity originates, thinking it my duty, as a wife, to do so whenever my husband demanded. I told him that my very soul shrank from maternity; that I was not yet prepared for its responsibilities and agonies, and begged of him not to impose that burden upon me till I could joyfully welcome it, which I felt that I should, in due time. But he heeded not my prayer. He insisted on the relation. Conception and maternity ensued.

“My soul died within me. An ever present loathing of the new life that was being developed within mine was in my heart. My own soul, and the God whose voice was heard within, repudiated its existence. I could not help the feeling. The spirit of murder, towards the unconscious child in embryo, was ever present to me; yet my soul shrank with horror from the deed. Shall I kill my child before its birth, or give existence to one whose birthright inheritance is a mother’s curse? was the question I found myself debating continually;—for my curse was on its very life.

“I consulted a woman, a friend in whom I trusted. I found that she had perpetrated that outrage on herself and on others. She told me it was not murder to kill a child any time before its birth. Of this she labored to convince me, and railed in the aid of her ‘family physician,’ to give force to her arguments. He argued that it was right and just for wives thus to protect themselves against the results of their husband’s sensualism,—told me that God and human laws would approve of killing children before they were born, rather than curse them with an undesired existence. My only trouble was, with God’s view of the case. I could not get rid of the feeling that it was an outrage on my body and soul, and on my unconscious babe. He argued that my child, at five months (which was the time), had no life, and where there was no life, no life could be taken. Though I determined to do the deed, or get the ‘family physician’ to do it, my womanly instincts, my reason, my conscience, my self-respect, my entire nature, revolted against my decision. My Womanhood rose up in withering condemnation. And, after the deed was done, I felt that I could never respect myself again; that I could never again appear in society; that if I did, all that was pure and true in manhood and womanhood would shrink from me as a polluted, disgusting object.

“I tried to cast the blame on my husband, who had imposed the necessity upon me. I tried to feel that the outrage and the guilt were all his own; that, had he heeded my prayer, and dealt justly by me, I should never have been driven to the dread alternative of ante-natal murder, or of giving birth to a child I did not want. But I saw and felt, that however great the wrong he had done to me, the fact still remained,—my nature was outraged, if not by my consent, yet by my sufferance. I knew I could have saved myself from maternity, had I been resolute to do so; and that, having submitted to the relation in which it originated, I had no right to add to the outrage by killing my child. I felt myself to be a crushed, prostituted, abandoned woman. Can any apology be offered for a woman who commits the crime of ante-natal murder, after she has voluntarily yielded to the relation that leads to maternity?

“Maternity, with its prospective agonies and its abhorred responsibilities (for I did not yet call for a child), was again thrust upon me in a few months; but I shrunk from destroying my child again. I gave birth to two living children. Then my soul rebelled against having more; but my husband was deaf to my prayers and my tears, though he himself was opposed to my having any more children, and insisted it was my fault if I did, though he persisted in his right to his sensual indulgence. How could I avoid having more children, when he was continually demanding of me the relation which naturally leads to offspring? ‘Kill them,’ was his reply, ‘before they are born, or do something to prevent conception!’

“His injustice and heartless selfishness cut me to the quick,—stung my very soul. ‘This is the man,’ I said to myself, ‘who has promised to love, cherish, and protect me; who expects me to love him tenderly and evermore; whom I have promised to love till death separates us; and yet, this is the man who, without regard to my wishes and conditions, insists on his right to gratify his passion, though at the expense of my body and soul!’ My soul rose in rebellion against him. It became evident to me, that the gratification of his passion was his only object in seeking me as a wife; that this was the only claim he had upon me, or wished to have, and that he had no higher idea of marriage than as a means of licensed, reputable indulgence.

“I became desperate. I could not leave my children. I knew if I left him, I could give no reason for the step, except my aversion to having maternity thrust upon me in defiance of the demands of my own nature, and I knew that all would condemn me, if I left him to escape from such an outrage, as this was not considered a wrong to me, but his right. Every feeling of my soul revolted against his taking possession of my person, without my consent, to blight and curse my body and soul to gratify his animal nature.

“I came to the conclusion to stand by my own rights, and defend my person against his sensualism. I told him, candidly, how I felt, and that I must protect myself, in this respect, for he would not. I told him I was living daily in deadly fear of his passion, and of maternity; that the relation in which it resulted had become repulsive to me, and that he had brought me to view myself as a loathed, abject and prostituted woman. His wrath was roused; and finally, from fear of breaking up my family and having my helpless living children taken from me, I submitted to a hell which had no mitigation, until separation gave it to me.

“In my intercourse with men, I have found few who did not view marriage and a wife as my husband did, as a mere means of sensual gratification. Companionship, intellectual, social, and spiritual growth, and elevation, they think little of, in connection with a wife. They see no soul, no God, in the wife; only the mere animal, to administer to the brute in them.”

In the presence of a just and pure God, and before the laws of Nature that are designed to govern all conjugal relations, does marriage give to the husband any right over the person of the wife, or to the wife any rights over the person of the husband, which neither had before? Has a husband any more right to demand of his wife the surrender of her person to his passion, than he has to demand that surrender of any other woman? True marriage creates necessities in each, and gives vitality and intensity to wants in each, which the presence, the love and companionship of the other can supply; but a pure conjugal love creates no rights, and never thinks or talks of rights over the property, the body, or the soul of the loved one. Indeed, a true man, whose soul is filled with a holy conjugal love for a woman, would scorn and loathe any personal caresses or surrender from her, when he knew she gave them merely from a sense of duty, and only because she believed he had a right to them. A man must be shorn of all true manliness, and become utterly debased and prostituted, before he can, in or out of legal marriage, accept the personal surrender of a woman to his passion, when he knows the surrender is made solely to please him, or from some false idea of duty. However tenderly, truly and devotedly a man may love a woman, she is not, therefore, under obligations to receive any expressions from him, except such as her own necessities demand. Whatever manifestations of yourself you would make to your wife, before offering them, create in her the necessity of demanding and of receiving them. If your nature prompts you to reveal yourself to her in the relation that leads to maternity control yourself, and be sternly true to yourself, to your wife, and your child that may ensue, until, by all other loving and endearing manifestations, you have created in her nature an earnest call for maternity. Then would she joyfully accept of you the germ of a new life, and, for the sake of her husband and her child, consecrate all the energies of her soul to its true development.

Read the following. The extract is from a letter written by one who has proudly and nobly filled the stations of a wife and a mother, and whose children and grandchildren surround her and crown her life with tenderest love and respect. She has seen many of the companions of her girlhood victimized, and literally offered up on the altar of sensualism, in legal marriage. Their husbands demanded passional gratification as their right, irrespective of consequences to wife or children, and they submitted as a duty. Their career was short, in many cases, and in others, they live but wrecks of their former selves. A relation that should have ennobled and saved them, has crushed them to death:

“It has often been a matter of wonder to me that men should, so heedlessly, and so injuriously to themselves, their wives, and children, and their homes, demand at once, as soon as they get legal possession of their wives, the gratification of a passion, which, when indulged merely for the sake of the gratification of the moment, must end in the destruction of all that is beautiful, noble, and divine, in man or woman. I have often felt that I would give the world for a friendship with man that should show no impurity in its bearing, and for a conjugal relation that would, at all times, heartily and practically recognize the right of the wife to decide for herself when, how often, and under what auspices, she should be a mother, or enter into the relation that leads to maternity.

“It is often said in my hearing, by women, that a woman who is not willing to submit her person to the passion of her husband, whenever he shall demand, is not fit to be a wife; and if she becomes so, and her husband forsakes her for other women, and neglects his children, he is to be pitied, and the wife condemned and held responsible for all the results. The law gives the husband cause for divorce if the wife persists in withholding her person from his embrace, which, when thus thrust upon her against her wishes, becomes loathsome and damnable. The community of women generally endorse this state of things, and are educated to believe that God gave man such fierce passions that he cannot control them; that they must be gratified whenever excited, though at the expense of woman’s health and happiness and the happiness of her children.

“Will man ever be pure, noble and strong enough to protect woman, in or out of legal marriage, against his own passion? Must woman always put herself on the defensive, to protect herself against man? Will man never see the fact as it is, that all that is manly, true, great and noble in his nature, must be preserved and perpetuated only by the protection of woman against being victimized to his sensual gratification? O man! thou art all noble and God-like, to the loving and trusting heart of woman! She longs to come to thee, to save thee, and to be saved by thee. But thou mayest be assured that thy heaven, in time and eternity, can be secured only by saving woman from prostitution. While she is regarded by thee as the means of sensual gratification, rather than as the vitalizing, redeeming power of thy manhood, she will bring desolation and death to thy soul, and thou to hers. To man, woman looks for strength. How she longs to rest in him,—how she longs to give herself to him in a self-abandoning trust,—and how she longs that he may ever be worthy such a trust, the heart of the true woman and wife alone can ever know. But when woman trusts and man proves weak, and betrays her longing and trusting heart, no words can express her sickening, crushing disappointment and anguish. Often do women prefer to die a lingering and loathsome death, rather than confess themselves mistaken and disappointed in those whom they have trusted.”

The following extract from a private letter speaks the thought and feeling of every true woman. Weigh well what the writer says of woman’s right to protect herself against the reckless passion of man. Also, what she says of woman’s power over man, and of man’s readiness to yield to that power, when woman has the courage to appeal to his love:

“I cannot conceive of a woman, who has willingly and joyfully received into her own being the germ of a new existence, with the noble design of rendering that existence happy, ever committing this foul deed [abortion]. The cause of it must always be, the previous submission to an unwelcome maternity. If this can be justified, if the laws of man and of God oblige woman thus to degrade and violate the sacredness of her own person, it follows that she, being thus outlawed, placed outside the protection of all law, human and divine, has a right to protect herself from further evil, and even avenge herself for the past, as she best can; and that whether by taking the life of her husband or of his child. Can this be denied as a necessary consequence? and does not the bare statement of it disprove the monstrous assertion that God, either by Nature or Revelation, has thus placed her at the disposal of man’s will? No living creature is created without some means of self-protection; and in woman, that weapon is Self-Respect.

“It makes my soul sick, even to a loathing of Humanity, to think of this unnatural deed, and its foul cause. Alas! men and women do not worship their own natures. ‘Let us eat and drink,’ they cry, ‘for to-morrow we die!’—‘Let us sacrifice the human to appease the brute.’

“Does not the crime of murder consist mainly in the fact, that every soul born on this planet has an inherent right to all the development it can receive in this, its birthplace, and when deprived of corporeal existence, is robbed of this right? If this be true then ante-natal murder of the same nature and character as post-natal murder. Yet for the one crime the criminal is accounted, by our judges, and by the sentiment of the public, to be worthy of death; whereas, these same judges, and this same public, incite to the commission of the other, by subjecting woman to an abhorred maternity.

“Where is the wrong? In the man, first of all. He it is who subjects the woman to this abhorred maternity, and for his own sensual gratification. For him there is no apology, save the miserable one that passion overcome love and reason, the animal triumphs over the man, the sensual over the spiritual.

“In the mind of the woman who allows herself to become thus basely subservient to her husband’s will, how loathsome is the memory of those progenitors who bequeath to the man a nature so mean, selfish, tyrannical and animal, and to the woman a nature so tamely, so ignobly subservient and unresisting! Where is the remedy? In the awakening of woman to this great evil. Woman must assert and maintain her rights in regard to maternity, ere any rational hope can be entertained for the future. I cannot believe that man would become the fierce, selfish tyrant he now is, if properly appealed to before his heart becomes hardened by indulgence,—that he who, in the general transactions of life, is just and honorable, would become the selfish despot at home, if the woman who is his wife fully respected her nature as woman, and her individual sacredness.

“Let woman, then, be appealed to. Let her ‘arise from the dust, and put on her beautiful garments,’ for then, and not till then, shall her light break forth as the morning, and Humanity become all glorious. But while woman, by law, custom, and religion, is made subservient to man’s sensual gratification, without regard to her feelings and wishes, while law, custom and religion bestow on man the right to inflict on woman a maternity whose suffering and responsibilities she is not prepared joyfully to welcome, and while woman, to gratify man’s sensualism, is subjected to the atrocious alternative of ante-natal murder, or of giving existence to children whom her inmost soul repels, there can be no hope of the regeneration and redemption, the elevation and happiness of the race, and of peopling the earth with nobler and more beautiful types of manhood and womanhood.”

How many husbands are unwilling to have their wives get knowledge as to their right to decide when they shall become mothers, or be subjected to the relation that leads to it! Let woman get light on this, if on no other subject, if she would be happy in her home. Slaveholders count him most guilty who attempts to teach their slaves their right to be free. So many husbands curse bitterly the man who would enlighten their wives in regard to Maternity, and the relation that leads to it. But true and earnest souls are pledged to spread light on this subject. Read the following:

“Married women are often as ignorant, and about as degraded, as to their rights and duties, respecting the function of Maternity and the relation that leads to it, as are the slaves of the South in regard to their rights. Many husbands are as unwilling that their wives should get light on these subjects, as are slaveholders that their slaves should be enlightened in regard to their condition. They must not be allowed to know that they are not morally bound to submit. They must have no will of their own; and by their weak subserviency, they even say to their husbands, ‘God thy law,—thou mine,’ as to Maternity and the relation that leads to it. How can they know that there is any other and nobler way, than to have children and complain, and complain and have children, and submit themselves to their husbands’ sensualism with entire servility and silence?

“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.

“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.

“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