The Alarming Prevalence of This Hideous Sin.—How Daughters are Initiated.—How Expectant Mothers Appeal to Reputable Physicians.—Young Women Should be Taught to Associate the Idea of Marriage with Motherhood.—Destruction of own Health and Life go Hand in Hand with Prenatal Murder.—Effect of Such Attempts Upon the Physical Life and Character.—Life from the Moment of Conception.—The Injustice and Cruel Wrongs Inflicted upon Wives by Uncontrolled Passions of Husbands.—Obligation of Motherhood Should be Recognized.—Its Blessings.—The Duty of the Physician as Educator of Public Sentiment.
“The destruction of the end or purpose of an institution is virtually the destruction of the institution itself. I firmly believe that the greatest sin against God and the greatest crime against society in the nineteenth century, is the covert attack, which in one form or another, excused by one consideration or another, is being waged against God’s institution of marriage.”—Rev. Brevard D. Sinclair.
Do our young women consider and really understand the giant evil which walks our[124] streets sometimes covertly, sometimes so openly, that with eyes of discernment it can be easily detected? This terrible evil that has been so excused, so palliated that it stands out in the minds of many, dressed, not in its hideous garb of sin and shame, but tricked in taking dress and attractive coloring—so attractive that many of our matrons have pointed it out and introduced it to our fresh, beautiful daughters, and introduced them into its mysteries, and all the horrible sin this evil is heir to.
I speak of the shamefully prevalent evil of antenatal infanticide.
I quote again from Mr. Sinclair. “A sin of such delicacy that people affect to be shocked when it is alluded to, and yet a sin which is practiced, applauded and commended so widely in private, that even the children are not ignorant of its prevalence among their elders. Indeed a sin, in which in many cases, daughters are deliberately nurtured and trained, so that when opportunity is presented for its practice the conscience is so stultified and suborned by long training and familiarity with its hellish and poisonous consequences, that it is committed without compunction.”
O mothers! with us rests in large measure[125] the righting of this terrible wrong. Are we aware ourselves of its loathsomeness, and are we prepared to pronounce against it everywhere where our voices can be heard? Shall we teach our daughters that the institution of marriage is for home and children, and that unless they are prepared to make the home and desire children, they are committing a grievous sin to enter its sacred portals?
Every reputable physician grows sick at heart many times, when he is approached by these untaught and unscrupulous young and older women, to ask him to be a party with them in the crime of murder, and possible suicide. “The sin is none the less heinous, and the crime none the less wicked when it is performed by those who affect ‘the best society,’ or who with unworthy hands take the bread and wine at the communion table of a dying Lord, who pronounced His blessing on the pure in heart.”
When an untaught young wife comes to us with a desire that she may be “helped out of her difficulty,” and then proceeds to tell us that she does not want children so early in her married life; that she wants to enjoy herself first for a while, or she wants to make a visit, or take a trip to Europe and cannot[126] be in that condition; and that she has tried all the simple means that she knows of, but has accomplished nothing; we sit down patiently and tell her from the beginning the sin and danger of it all; danger, not only to life, but also to all the higher instincts of our nature; for when one deliberately takes a life, the conscience is seared to all sin, and the pathway down to the lower depths is an easy one. I can assure you, this is no easy task, for we have the teaching of friends and relatives, yes, and I grieve to say, sometimes of mothers to undo! Oh the sorrow of it!
Young women, with you rests the hope of the world in the betterment of this sad state of things. Know that when you enter marriage with any other thought than that you will be the joyful mother of children, you commit a grievous sin. Know that any plan you may have made to obviate this, indefinitely, while allowing the close marriage relation to exist, is sinful and makes you partaker with abortionists, and those who would destroy the holy institution of home and fireside.
When women who have grown older in years and experience enter my office with their specious reasoning, women who have no excuse for not knowing the evil thing which[127] they are advocating, I feel like denouncing them before the world as the enemies of God and womankind. Oh the shame that woman who should be the helper and inspiration in all good things should so lend her hand and heart to evil!
But the sin does not always stop with the murder. Many times her own life is a sacrifice to her sin, or if not this, she is doomed to invalidism the remainder of her days. Truly, as Mr. Sinclair says, “Many a woman is buried with Christian burial, over whose grave ought to be placed a tombstone with this inscription: “Here lies a suicide, assisted to her grave by her murderers—her husband, her female counsellors, and the conscienceless physician.””
There is no excuse whatever for the crime of abortion. The arguments are many that are made to ease the conscience, or palliate the sin, but not one of them will hold, before a tribunal of honest clean thinking people, with God on the bench.
It is wicked, say they, to bring so many children into the world that cannot be well taken care of; “I really have not the strength to take care of any more;” and they go on in their sinful practice until health is destroyed or life sacrificed. “I do not[128] think that women should give their lives to bearing children, and have no time for mental improvement,” they say again, while they spend a great part of their time in devising means to prevent conception, or in worry, lest they may not succeed, while the little fragment of time and strength is given to the pursuit of “culture,” and at the age, when, had they borne their children and been joyful in training them, they would have been vigorous and strong for years of mental work and wide culture. At this very time because of what they have done they are pale broken-down women, with no strength or ambition left for nobler pursuits than groaning over their ill-health or seeking alleviation for their sufferings.
But their sin does not stop with themselves, but is written legibly upon the lives of the children, who, in spite of thei............