THE
                            UNWELCOME CHILD;
                                  OR,
                THE CRIME OF AN UNDESIGNED AND UNDESIRED
                               MATERNITY.


                          BY HENRY C. WRIGHT,

                  AUTHOR OF “MARRIAGE AND PARENTAGE.”


                            EIGHTH EDITION.


                                BOSTON:
                       COLBY & RICH, PUBLISHERS,
                          9 MONTGOMERY PLACE.
                                 1876.




       Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1858, by
                            HENRY C. WRIGHT,
     In the Clerk’s Office of the District Court of the District of
                             Massachusetts.




                               CONTENTS.


                                                                    PAGE

 PREFACE,                                                              5

 INTRODUCTORY LETTER: A Husband to Henry C. Wright—Inquiries
   respecting the Laws of Nature designed to govern Parentage,         9

 LETTER I.—THE MOTHER’S POWER OVER HER CHILD: Maternity, its
   bearing on the Character and Destiny of the Race—Two great facts
   relating to the Ante-Natal Development and Education of the
   Child,                                                             13

 LETTER II.—UNDESIRED MATERNITY:—Crime against the Mother—How it
   affects her towards the Father of her Child—Who is responsible
   for the Existence of Children, God or the Parents?—Has the Woman
   a right to say when she shall assume the office of Maternity, or
   subject herself to the relation that leads to Maternity?—A
   certain method to secure the purity, peace, and happiness of
   Home,                                                              23

 LETTER III.—UNDESIRED MATERNITY: Crime against the
   Child—Ante-Natal Claims of the Child—Bearing of the Ante-Natal
   History of a Child on its Post-Natal Character and
   Destiny—Whatever injuriously affects the Mother must injuriously
   affect the Child—A Child struggling into life against the spirit
   of Murder in the heart of its Mother,                              37

 LETTER IV.—UNDESIRED MATERNITY: Crime against the Child as
   affecting its Ante-Natal Education—The most intense and potent
   of all human relations—Man in three States—Ante-Natal Education,
   its bearing on the future Man or Woman, on Society, on Church
   and State—The Guilt of Husbands,                                   51

 LETTER V.—THE WIFE’S APPEAL AND THE HUSBAND’S RESPONSE: The last
   link of Marriage—A Word to Wives—A Word to Maidens—How both may
   save themselves from deepest degradation and wretchedness,         72

 LETTER VI. WORDS FITLY SPOKEN, by one who speaks with Authority:
   Passive Obedience of Wives to Husbands in regard to the relation
   that leads to Maternity—The Authority of Nature in regard to
   Maternity—The indignant protest of Humanity against the
   legalized Sensualism of Husbands,                                  88

 LETTER VII. THE DREAD ALTERNATIVE: Ante-Natal Murder, or an
   Unwelcome Child,                                                  100




                                PREFACE.


Maternity, the relation that leads to it, and the responsibilities,
anxieties, and agonies generally connected with it,—the right of Woman
to decide for herself when she shall assume the responsibilities, and be
subjected to the sufferings, of Maternity, and to the relation in which
it originates,—Man, without regard to the wishes and conditions of his
wife, heedless of the physical and spiritual welfare of his offspring,
and solely for his own gratification, imposing on his wife Maternity,
with all its attendant anguish of body and soul,—the crime of earth,—the
greatest outrage one human being can perpetrate on another,—ante-natal
murder,—the ante-natal history of a human being, and its bearing on his
post-natal character and destiny, in the body and out of it,—such are
the topics which are presented and discussed in the following pages.

The author has aimed so to present these subjects that no intelligent
and pure-minded man or woman need to misunderstand or misconstrue his
meaning, or be offended by his words and modes of expression. These
subjects belong to the holy of holies of human existence. With them is
associated all that is nearest and dearest to the heart of man and
woman. In the inmost sanctuary of Home, these should be the topics of
freest and most anxious conversation. All that is pure, lovely,
beautiful, and ennobling, in the relations of Husband and Wife, and
Parent and Child, is directly connected with these subjects, and the
views entertained of them by men and women in and out of legal marriage.
But that which transpires during the period between conception and
birth, as the foundation of character in the future man or woman, as an
index to their thoughts, feelings, plans, motives, actions, to their
virtues and vices, to successes and failures in life’s conflict, has
been entirely overlooked by biographers and historians, by poets and
novelists, in their efforts to delineate human life as manifested in
individuals, or in civil and ecclesiastical combinations. Yet all admit
that physical, intellectual, and social tendencies and conditions are
organized into the body and soul of every child, during that period,
that must give tone and direction to the man or woman in all their
future life. In their relations as husbands and wives, fathers and
mothers, sons and daughters, brothers and sisters, friends and
neighbors, in all their commercial, social, civil, and ecclesiastical
relations, their feelings, and their treatment of all with whom they may
be associated, must depend greatly on these ante-natal influences and
tendencies.

The life of every good man and the life of every bad man, the life of a
teetotaller and the life of a drunkard, a life of love and a life of
hatred, a life of forgiveness and a life of revenge, a life of truth,
justice, and purity, and a life of falsehood, injustice, and impurity,
the life of Jesus and the life of Napoleon,—who can determine to what
extent all these have been, are, or will be, controlled by birthright
tendencies, and by influences that, before they were born, bore upon
those who live these lives? Certain it is that, to a great extent, the
diseases, sufferings, and premature deaths, and many of the individual,
social, governmental, and ecclesiastical thefts, robberies, and murders,
committed in the post-natal state of our being, are but the natural, if
not the necessary results of these ante-natal organic and constitutional
conditions and tendencies.

To all Husbands and Wives, to all Fathers and Mothers, and to all who
hope to enter into these most ennobling and most potent of all human
relations, are the following pages earnestly commended, by

                                                             THE AUTHOR.




                          INTRODUCTORY LETTER.
                     A Husband to Henry C. Wright.


                                               BOSTON, January 10, 1857.

 MY DEAR FRIEND:

It is twenty years since I first heard you discourse on the Mission and
Relation of the Sexes. You stated then, in substance, that the sexes had
power, each over the other, to save or to destroy; that all rational
hope of the elevation and perfection of human nature must rest upon a
knowledge of, and obedience to, the laws of Nature, designed to govern
those relations; that man must look to _generation_, rather than to
_re_generation, to bring the race into perfect union and harmony with
the Divine; that no power could save either man or woman, in isolation
from, or in false relations with, each other; and that if either sinks
or rises, the other must follow.

I was but a boy when I first heard you utter such sentiments. I did not
then understand their full import. They had not entered into the
experience of my inner or outer life. Yet I took the impression, that
woman would be to man just what he chose and had power to make her; and
that it depended on man to say whether woman should be to him a
purifying and ennobling influence, or a source of degradation and ruin.

From that time I had a desire, so far as woman is concerned, to place
myself in such relations to her, that her influence on my life might be
pure and ennobling. I have studied to get clear and definite views of my
nature and needs as a man, and how woman can most perfectly accomplish
her mission of love and salvation to me.

I am now a husband; made so, not by any enactment, ceremony or license
of Church or State (though my marriage is placed upon record, as an
historical fact); nor by the consent of any third party; nor by any
formal contract or bargain between me and the woman to whom I hold this
relation; but by a law or necessity of my being; by a power, unseen, but
ever present, and ever potent to guide, like that which binds the needle
to the pole, or the soul to God.

All that qualifies me to be a husband and a father, I have consecrated
to the development and happiness of my wife, and of the children who may
result from our union. I have done this, not because she demands it as
her right, but solely because I find in myself a necessity for so doing.
She make no demands on me as a right; she asks of me only what I feel
the necessity of giving. My love for her gives me no rights over her
property, her person, or her affections. It makes no demands on her, as
a right, but it makes great demands on my own manhood. True conjugal
love never creates rights over the loved one, but necessities in the one
who loves. This necessity is laid upon me, not by any arbitrary decree
of Church or State, but solely by the concentrated, exclusive love,
which, as a husband, I bear to my wife. The purity and dignity of my
nature are involved in my yielding to this necessity.

I would consecrate my manhood to the perfection and happiness of my
wife, and of the children who may be born of our union, in the home
which, by our united efforts, we hope to create. Your conversation with
me, as a boy and a youth, and your counsel, have been invaluable in the
regulation of my life in my relations with women. I have read your work,
entitled “MARRIAGE AND PARENTAGE; or, the Reproductive Element in Man as
a Means of his Elevation and Happiness.” To us, in the home of our love,
your teachings will ever be as divine oracles, to regulate our relations
as husband and wife. We would embody in our lives your “ERNEST” and
“NINA,” especially in regard to parentage, and the relation that leads
to it; believing that those who do actualize that ideal husband and
wife, cannot fail to receive a divine reward, in an ever-growing and an
ever-ennobling love and trust. To that husband who shall embody your
Ernest, the love, the respect and trust of his wife, will be as the sun
and dew of heaven to the opening buds of spring; they will expand and
beautify his manly soul, and cause his manhood to give out all its
beauty and fragrance, and shed a bright and steady light on the pathway
of his wife, and bring enduring rest to her heart in the home of her
wedded love. We would live in and for each other, and in and for our
offspring. We would be represented in the great human family by those
whom we shall be proud to call our children, and whom all of human kind
shall feel honored to recognize as brothers and sisters. We would not
see our nature degraded, nor our glory tarnished, in ourselves or our
posterity, but we would see that glory made brighter, and that nature
more noble.

I know that on the government of my passional relations with my wife
depends her health and life of body and soul, the health of our
children, and the beauty and happiness of our home. I know, if she ever
is made to fear my passion, and to shrink from the personal intimacies
of her husband, home, from that hour, becomes desolate and repulsive, no
matter what may be the natural or artistic elegance of our material
surroundings. I know that in proportion as she cherishes a loving and
trusting respect for all that constitutes me a man, will she lovingly
and calmly rest in the bosom of her husband; and that the most sacred
sanctuary of our home, instead of being an altar of cruel and merciless
sacrifice of her health and life, will be a fountain of eternal life and
peace to us both,—a temple consecrated to all true manifestations of an
unselfish conjugal and parental love.

I feel the responsibility that rests upon me. I would have my wife
associate my manhood with her own purity, and not with my selfish
gratification. I would have her assured that my nature, as a man, is
under the control of conscience and reason, and held in subjection to
her perfect development, and that of our children. I would be an
unselfish, noble husband, and a true and happy father; a husband and
father who can stand in the pride and dignity of conscious nobility
before his wife and children. I would be a MAN; one whose soul,
vitalized and ennobled by the presence and power of conjugal and
paternal love, shall never cower before its own consciousness, nor in
the presence of its God.

If you can give me your thoughts and feelings in regard to parentage,
and the relation that leads to it, you will confer a favor on one whose
love and respect for you will never end.

                                                      Yours,
                                                              A HUSBAND.




                                  THE

                    CRIME OF AN UNDESIRED MATERNITY

                         Letters to a Husband.




                               LETTER I.
                   THE MOTHER’S POWER OVER HER CHILD.


 MY FRIEND:

I have read your letter with deep interest. Your inquiries respecting
the mission of the sexes, and the government of your passional relations
with your wife, seem right and proper, and what every man, who would
secure and perpetuate the love and respect of his wife, and the purity
and happiness of his home, will make, and on which, above all other
subjects, he will seek for light. They shall receive frank and candid
answers, so far as I can give them. I thank you for proposing them, as,
in answering, I shall take occasion to give my views on a subject which,
of all others, most directly concerns the organization and development,
the character and destiny of the men and women of the future, and which
involves the purity and peace of home, and the growth and prosperity of
society.

Here let me say, that on no subject should a man and woman, as they are
being attracted into conjugal relations, be more open and truthful with
each other than on this. No woman, who would save herself and the man
she loves from a desecrated and wretched home, should enter into the
physical relations of marriage with a man until she understands what he
expects of her as to the function of maternity, and the relation that
leads to it. If a woman is made aware that the man who would win her as
a wife regards her and the marriage relation only as the means of a
legalized gratification of his passions, and she sees fit to live with
him as a wife, with such a prospect before her, she must take the
consequences of a course so degrading and so shameless. If she sees fit
to make an offering of her body and soul on the altar of her husband’s
sensuality, she must do it; but she has a right to know to what base
uses her womanhood is to be put; and it is due to her, as well as to
himself, that he should tell her beforehand precisely what he wants and
expects of her.

Too frequently man shrinks from all allusion, during courtship, to his
expectations in regard to future passional relations. He fears to speak
of them, lest he should shock and repel the woman he would win as a
wife. Being conscious, it may be, of an intention to use the power he
may acquire over her person for his own gratification, he shuns all
interchange of views with her, lest she should divine the hidden
sensualism of his soul, and his intention to victimize her person to it,
the moment he shall get the license. A woman had better die at once than
enter into or continue in marriage with a man whose highest conception
of the relation is, that it is a means of licensed animal indulgence. In
such a relation, body and soul are sacrificed. “Let there be light” as
to what constitutes a natural, divine parentage!

I shall not, in answering your queries, attempt to point out minutely
what I think to be the fixed laws of human nature for the government of
human parentage. I have some things to say to you, and to all who are,
or hope to be, husbands, respecting the _crime of an undesigned and an
undesired Maternity_. From what I shall say on this subject, it may be
that you will get some hints as to the regulation of your passional
relations with your wife.

You are a husband; you hope to be a father, and to make for yourself,
your wife and children, a pure and happy home, where perfect freedom,
perfect love and trust shall dwell, and where your entire nature shall
expand and be perfected in all purity and nobleness. You would elevate
and perfect the nature you bear in yourself and in your children. This
you hope to do, not through your relations to Church or State, but
through your relations as a husband and father, and by obedience to
those laws of Nature which are designed to control your life in those
relations. As compared with the question of _the right use of the
reproductive element_,—its bearing on the growth, elevation and
happiness of your entire being, in this and in all states of your
present and future existence,—all questions of wealth, of reputation, of
religion, and government, sink into insignificance. Your treatment of
your wife in regard to Maternity, and to the relation from which it
results, must shape your destiny and hers, at home and abroad. How can
you respect yourself, knowing that your disregard of her rights, in
reference to this most sacred function, has destroyed all respect for
you in the heart of your wife?

MATERNITY is the subject under consideration. Ought it ever to exist
except at the desire of the woman, and when her nature calls for it? Can
it be right for man to impose on her this most sublime and overwhelming
of all human responsibilities, when her nature recoils from the burden?
She is not prepared to take charge of the germ of a new life, and to
meet the suffering and the responsibility of developing and giving birth
to a child, if her body and soul shrink from it. Under such
circumstances, can it be right for man to urge on her a suffering and
responsibility so much dreaded, or subject her to the possibility of a
maternity against which her soul so earnestly protests?

It may be asked,—Why confine the discussion to _Maternity_? Why not look
at the broad question of _Parentage_, and include the responsibility of
the father, as well as of the mother? For the reason, that Maternity
holds a far more intimate relation to the organization and character
than Paternity. The mother has a more direct control over human destiny
than the father. Woman is far more liable than man to suffer deep and
enduring wrong in the office of perpetuating the race. Man, as will be
shown, is generally the wrong-doer, when wrong exists; to woman belong
the suffering and anguish. Woman is the victim; on man rests the
responsibility. Woman’s appeal is to man to spare her this suffering and
anguish, except when her nature calls, and then will she, for his sake
and her own, joyfully meet and bear the cross. It is meet that woman’s
appeal should be sustained. I wish to sustain it; and in so doing, while
my remarks will bear mainly on Maternity, Paternity will necessarily
come under review. Maternity, when a crime, suggests the questions, Who
is the criminal? To what extent is he responsible for the consequences?
So, in fact, the whole subject of Parentage is open, as involving the
conduct and responsibility of both parents.

But, before proceeding to consider this wrong and outrage upon woman,
and its influence on her, I wish to allude to two facts bearing directly
on the subject.

1. _That which forms the body and soul of the child must come to it,
previous to birth, through the maternal organism._

Pause, my friend, and contemplate this fact, in its bearing on the
birthright tendencies, the character and destiny, of your child. You and
your wife wish to have a child. She prepares herself cheerfully and
bravely to bear the sufferings and responsibilities of Maternity. The
germ, so small when she takes charge of it, in a brief space assumes the
form of a human being, and is increased in size and in weight hundreds
of thousands of times.

How did the substance reach it which constituted its growth? Every
particle of matter that reaches it to form its brain, its nerves, its
heart, its lungs, its blood, its bones and sinews, was prepared in the
maternal organism, and was carried to it through the medium of her
blood. Whatever is received into her system, in the shape of food,
drink, air, and various gases, and which goes to nourish her brain,
heart, nerves, and other organs, and keep them in healthful activity,
must go to form the corresponding portions of the child’s body. The
material that nourishes the brain of the mother forms, from the
beginning, the brain of the child; that which nourishes the lungs and
nerves of the mother forms also the lungs and nerves of the child. So of
every organ and portion of the body. From whatever the mother takes into
her system must come the body and soul of her child.

2. _This substance, as it passes through the maternal system, must
receive the impress of her mental and physical conditions._

Ponder this fact, see its bearing on the character and destiny of your
child, of all children, and of the race, and see if its importance can
be over-estimated. That it is a fact, in the science of Embryology and
Fœtal Development, is not denied. Whatever _temporarily_ affects the
maternal blood, must _permanently_ affect the organic conditions and
constitutional tendencies, and of course the post-natal character and
destiny, of the child. This is much insisted on by writers on the laws
and function of reproduction. Thus Carpenter, in his “Principles of
Human Physiology,” says: “That many of the organic functions are
directly influenced by the nervous system, is a matter which does not
admit of dispute,—sometimes in exciting, sometimes in checking, and
sometimes in otherwise modifying them.”—(Sec. 946.)

Whatever, then, affects the nervous system, affects the organic
functions. That the nervous system is deeply affected by the kind and
quality of our food and drink, and by mental impressions, cannot be
doubted. Witness the influence of tea, alcohol, opium, tobacco, and
various kinds of food, on the nerves, and also of anger, grief, revenge,
fear, love, hate, &c. As Carpenter says, “The influence of particular
conditions of the mind in exciting various secretions is a matter of
daily experience.” He instances the increased secretion and flow of
saliva by the idea of food, the secretion and flow of tears by joy,
tenderness, or grief, and the influence of the love of offspring on the
mammary secretions.

“The sexual secretions,” he says, “are strongly influenced by the
conditions of the mind;” instancing the effects of a “fitful temper,”
“fits of anger,” “grief,” “anxiety of mind,” “fear,” “terror,” on the
mammary secretions, and showing that these emotions often so poison the
mother’s milk as permanently to affect the health, and sometimes destroy
the life of the nursing child.—(Sec. 948.)

Weigh well the following sentiments of Carpenter: “That the mental state
of the mother can produce important alterations in her own blood, seems
demonstrated by the considerations previously adduced in regard to its
effects upon the process of nutrition and secretion, and that such
alterations are _sufficient to determine modifications in the
developmental processes of the embryo_, TO WHICH HER BLOOD FURNISHES THE
MATERIAL, can scarcely admit a question, when we recollect what
influence the presence or absence of particular substances has in
modifying the growth of parts of the adult.” In regard to cases where
children are marked before birth, he says: “The effect must be produced
upon the maternal blood, and _transmitted through it to the fœtus_,
since there is no nervous communication between the parent and
offspring.”

On every hand, life is full of facts illustrative of the influence of
the mental and physical conditions of the mother on the organic
structure and constitutional tendencies of the body and soul of her
unborn child. As the maternal blood is healthfully or otherwise affected
by what she eats and drinks, and by her mental conditions, so will the
organization of her child be healthful or diseased. If the mass of blood
from which the fœtus is nourished and receives its material for growth
is filled with disease, from any cause, the child must be similarly
affected.

This is a fearful fact, when viewed in its bearing on the post-natal
health and happiness of the child, and on the character and destiny of
the human family. One can scarcely avoid the query, Is it just to place
the destiny of one human being so entirely in the power of another? The
power of the mother over her child, previous to birth, is absolute.
Through what she eats and drinks, during gestation, she can fix the
organic and constitutional tendencies of her child to health or disease,
to good or evil, to happiness or misery, and thus control its character
and destiny after it is born, during its infancy, childhood, youth and
manhood. Not only through the character of what she eats and drinks, but
through her _mental_ emotions and conditions, through her amusements,
her anxieties, her joys, her sorrows, her loves and hates, her
exaltation and depression, her hopes and fears, can she affect the
birthright physical and spiritual tendencies of her child, and thus
control its destiny. She may doom her child to drunkenness, to lying, to
revenge, and make him or her a thief, a liar, a drunkard, a glutton, a
miser, a warrior, a slaveholder, a robber, a murderer, a pirate, or an
assassin, before its birth, and while it is all unconscious of the doom
which the mother is preparing for it, and totally incapable of resisting
the fatal influence that is shaping its destiny.

The mother has a fearful power. It is absolute for good or evil.
Terrible is the doom of that child whose organization and development,
before birth, were controlled by the mother’s ignorance, folly, or
hatred. Emphatically, as she is true to herself, she is true to her
unborn child. It seems a mystery that the character and destiny of a
human being should so materially depend on the food, drink, thoughts,
feelings and passions of the mother during that brief period; but such
is the fact, and we can only bow in silence to the fiat of God, being
assured that whatever power the mother has for evil, she has the same
for good; and that the question whether she shall use that power for
good or evil over her child is one which may be settled mainly, if not
solely, by the father, as will hereafter be shown. I will only say here,
that the answer to the question, Will the mother use her power over her
child for good or for evil? depends on the answer to a previous
question—Is her maternity a willing or unwilling one? This question it
is generally in the power of the husband and father to answer.

Now, my friend, contemplate the bearing of these two facts on the
post-natal character and destiny of your child. The germ is placed in
the maternal system, there to be nourished and to be developed through
the substances conveyed to it by the maternal blood. Whatever the mother
eats and drinks directly affects the nutrition and organization of her
child. Whatever thoughts, feelings and passions agitate her mind, leave
their traces on that which goes to form its body and soul. How
important, then, to the health, character and happiness, of the future
man or woman, that the mother, during gestation, should receive into her
system only the purest and most healthful food and drink, and into her
mind only bright, cheerful, happy, peaceful thoughts and feelings! To
her husband, woman looks for sympathy and support to enable her truly
and bravely to meet this great demand upon her nature. She should be
encircled by a tender, consecrating love. To the father of her child she
looks for this. Shall she look in vain, or be left to bear the cross
alone?

                                                    Thine,
                                                        HENRY C. WRIGHT.




                               LETTER II.
 THE CRIME AGAINST THE MOTHER.—HOW IT AFFECTS HER TOWARDS THE FATHER OF
                               HER CHILD.


MY FRIEND:

Before considering the wrong done to the mother, I would state two
points which I shall take for granted:

1. That parents, alone, are responsible for the _existence_ of their
children.

2. That woman, alone, has a right to say when, and under what
circumstances, she shall assume the office of maternity, or subject
herself to the _liability_ of becoming a mother.

These two positions seem to me so self-evident, that no arguments can
make them more clear and certain. Who is responsible for the _existence_
of children, God or the parents? Who shall say how many children a woman
shall have, and under what circumstances she shall have them, the wife
or the husband? Who shall say how often, for what purposes, and under
what conditions, the wife shall subject her person to a relation which
renders her _liable_ to become a mother, and to the suffering and
anguish of developing and giving birth to a child? To ask these
questions is to answer them. Nature makes but one reply, and that will
be found in the consciousness of every true husband and wife, and father
and mother.

What is the influence of an undesired maternity on the mother, in regard
to the father of her child? is my first inquiry. What is it? It is felt,
but seldom spoken. It cannot be expressed in words, as it is felt in the
heart.

A woman comes into the relation of a legal wife. At once, it may be, the
husband reveals himself to her in a way she did not anticipate, and she
is made to know what he expects of her, and for what he married her. She
yields her person to his passion, not in obedience to a call in her own
nature, but because she thinks that such is the right conferred by law
and custom on the husband over the wife. She has, it may be, been duly
taught that the only way to secure and strengthen his love is to yield
to his passion, whenever it demands indulgence. So she yields, and
before she is aware, and before her mind is prepared to meet them, the
responsibilities, anxieties and sufferings of maternity are upon her.
Grief, anguish, and a dread of some unknown, but terrible suffering,
overwhelm her. Consternation seizes the heart, so recently buoyant with
the hopes and joys of a loving and trusting bride.

How will this new and dreaded experience affect her mind towards her
husband and the father of her child? As a lover, he had been so gentle,
so delicate, and so considerate of her slightest wish, so thoughtful of
her happiness, and so unwilling to say or do anything to grieve her
spirit; as a bridegroom, he had promised to love and cherish her as his
own soul; and she fondly trusted that no wrong or suffering would ever
reach her through him; when, behold! in the very beginning of their
united life, and before, physically or mentally, she was prepared to
meet the great demand, he has imposed on her the necessity of yielding
up her body and soul to the keenest suffering to which she can be
subjected; and that without consulting her wishes, and contrary, it may
be, to her earnest prayer. As she ponders on her situation, and the
experience through which she must pass, and from which death to herself,
or her child, or to both, is the only door of escape, how must she feel
towards him who has placed her in this fearful condition? He has
subjected her to the necessity, for weary months, of drinking the
bitterest cup of life, and of passing through the valley and shadow of
death, heart-sick, desponding and shrinking from the final result; and
all this, not because she wished to be a mother, or he a father, nor
that they might blend their bodies and souls in a new and beautiful
life, to be an honor to themselves and the world,—no such motive
prompted the relation in which conception originated; but solely his
momentary gratification. She feels that his indulgence was had at her
expense. No conscious pride and sense of matronly dignity, no high and
noble aspirations, sustain her, as she reflects on her condition. Can
she continue to love and respect him? He has done her the greatest
wrong. He heeded not her prayers that he would control his passion, and
spare her until she was ready joyfully to enter upon an office so grand
in its nature, and so sublime in its bearing on the destiny of an
immortal soul. To meet the responsibilities of such an office, and the
physical and mental pain and anguish necessarily pertaining to it, what
woman but needs a preparation? Who is sufficient for these things? Yet
the dread liabilities are upon her, without a moment’s warning, and
without, it may be, any interchange of thoughts and feelings with her
husband and the father of her child. She knows not even that he wants a
child, nor whether he will receive it with a blessing or a curse. She
knows not what heart-support she will receive from him in the moment of
her trial and her anguish. He has had no conversation with her on these
subjects, and given her no assurance as to the natural results to her of
his passional relations with her; expressed no anxiety, no expectations,
no hopes, as to her liability to become a mother. He has had no further
wish or anxiety, except for his own selfish gratification. He has, it
may be, avoided, as indelicate and improper, all allusion to questions
so vital to the life and happiness of his newly-wedded wife. All she has
to rest upon is the indefinite assurance, given before God and man, that
he will cherish, protect and care for her. _Why_ he promised to protect
and care for her, whether as a mere means of sensual gratification, or
for holier and more exalted purposes, she has no assurance. Not one
word, it may be, has he ever spoken to her respecting the motives that
have prompted him to seek her as a wife. O, woman! woman! how dare you
enter into such a relation with a man, without knowing what he expects
of you?

The wife, in such a situation, cannot cherish loving and tender thoughts
of her husband when absent, nor receive his caresses with rapture when
present. She bears in herself the result of the wrong he has inflicted
on her. It is ever present to her thoughts and emotions. She cannot
escape from it but by an outrage on herself and child; and as, in her
moments of solitary suffering and anguish, she reflects on her
condition, and why she must endure them, how can she regard the author
of them with loving respect? The sense of the wrong done her is ever
present,—can she tenderly cherish the wrong-doer, especially when he
continues to demand of her a constant renewal of the relation in which
her present afflictions and forebodings of future sorrows originated?
She cannot; for he, by inflicting on her a maternity which her own soul
cannot sanction, and from which, perhaps, she shrinks with horror, has
rendered himself unworthy of her love and respect.

It is in vain to urge a woman thus situated to love and honor her
husband. At no command of God or man can she, as a wife, love and
cherish him. Indeed, no wife can love her husband at the word of
command. If she loves him at all, it is because she must, not because
she is ordered to do it. Her love will flow out to him as a necessity of
her being, not by the command of a third party. If he has no power to
call it out and concentrate it on himself, it will not go out to him.
Nothing can force it out. She is not to blame if she does not love him.
She gives him all he has power to awaken and call out,—all the love he
has power to take; more he has no right to ask, more she cannot give.
Her love for him will correspond to his lovableness in her eyes; he will
seek to render himself lovable to her, just in proportion to the value
he sets on her love. Expect no love from a woman because she is your
legal wife. The legal bond can impose on her no obligation to love you;
and if it did, she cannot love you, if your person and your passion
become disgusting to her.

Would you, my friend, increase and perpetuate the love and respect of
your wife? Then beware how you demean yourself towards her in regard to
maternity, and the relation that may, at any time, result in it. To a
true woman and a loving wife, maternity, and the passional expressions
of her husband, must ever be ennobling, or degrading. It is for him to
say which they shall be. It is for you to say whether, as the father of
her child, you shall seem to your wife altogether pure, noble and
attractive, or selfish, ignoble and repulsive. You must determine
whether the mother of your child shall see in you a generous, tender,
kingly husband, all-worthy to be the father of her child, and to rule
over the empire of her heart, or a mean, merciless tyrant, having no
purer or higher aim, in your relations with her, than that of animal
indulgence, and whom it is impossible to respect. It is for you to say
to what extent, and how long, she shall love and respect you. She must
love and honor you, if you seem to her to be worthy; she cannot, if you
seem otherwise. How can you thus seem, when she is made to feel that for
your gratification, and against her earnest appeal to you, as a man and
husband, you have imposed on her a burden which she feels unable and
unwilling to bear?

Maternity, when it exists at the call of the wife, and is gratefully
received, but binds her heart more tenderly and devotedly to her
husband. As the father of her child, he stands before her invested with
new beauty and dignity. In receiving from him the germ of a new life,
she receives that which she feels is to add new beauty and glory to her
as a woman,—new grace and attraction to her as a wife. She loves and
honors him, because he has crowned her with the glory of a mother.
Maternity, to her, instead of being repulsive, is a diadem of beauty, a
crown of rejoicing, and deep, tender, and self-forgetting are her love
and reverence for him who has placed it on her brow. How noble, how
august, how beautiful, is Maternity, when thus bestowed and received!

But, in proportion as it is holy and ennobling when designedly conferred
and joyfully received, is it unholy and debasing, when undesigned and
undesired. In proportion as a mother’s heart overflows with tender
gratitude and loving reverence towards the father of her child, when
that child comes in answer to the call of her womanly and wifely nature,
will it be filled with aversion to the father of a child which she did
not want, and which she is conscious is the result of a relation sought
only for a sensual purpose.

Many wives become indifferent to, or positively and forever alienated
from, their husbands, from this cause. Nothing will so surely and so
irrevocably destroy the love of a wife for a husband, as a disregard, on
his part, of her feelings and wishes in regard to Maternity, and to the
relation from which it comes. In nothing are husbands (through
ignorance, I would fain think) so unmindful of the entreaties and wants
of their wives, as in these respects. They often demand the surrender of
their persons without any inquiry into their feelings and conditions;
consequently, before they are aware, the very life of God in their
hearts,—that is, their love and respect for their husbands,—is crushed
out of them. No wonder, when we consider what liabilities, what a sense
of self-degradation, and what a shrinking of soul, are involved, to a
true woman, in a surrender of her person to mere sensual passion, and to
a maternity so dreaded. On the contrary, how certainly and how
permanently a husband will secure the love and respect of his wife, and
her perfect trust, when he so treats her as to make her feel secure that
she is never to become a mother till her own nature calls for it; and
when, knowing his own nature, he can assure her that he shall never
subject her to the possibility of that suffering till she is able and
willing to bear it!

When a woman once feels that the power of her husband is controlled by a
tender love and reverence for her, and a desire to subject it to her
growth and happiness, rather than to promote his own selfish ends, she
rests in his bosom knowing no fear, assured that this very passion will
but intensify the holy love that encircles her. When all fear of his
passion is gone, her love and trust are perfected. But let the fear of
that once settle on her heart, and her love is gone. Love and respect
for the husband cannot exist in the heart of the wife simultaneously
with a dread of his passion.

Would you, then, secure the love and trust of your wife, and become an
object of her ever-growing tenderness and reverence, never impose on her
a maternity which her nature does not sanction; neither subject her to
the _possibility_ of enduring the suffering incident to such a
situation. Assure her, by all your manifestations, and your perfect
respect for the functions of her nature, that your passion shall be in
subjection to her wishes, and that she will never be made to endure the
trials of maternity, except at the call of her own soul. How tenderly
and reverently would she, under such an assurance, regard your physical,
as well as your mental and spiritual manhood!

It is not enough that you have secured, in the heart of your wife,
respect for your spiritual and intellectual manhood. To maintain your
self-respect in your relations with her, to perfect your growth and
happiness as a husband, you must cause your _physical_ nature to be
tenderly cherished and reverenced by her in all the sacred intimacies of
home. No matter how much she reverences your intellectual, or your
social power, if she shrinks with disgust from all contact with your
person, if by reason of your uncalled-for passional manifestations, you
have made your physical manhood disagreeable, and all personal contact
painful, how can you, in her presence, preserve a sense of manly pride
and dignity as a husband? You cannot, if you respect yourself.

One distinctive characteristic of a true and noble husband is a feeling
of manly pride in the physical elements of his manhood. His physical
manhood, as well as his soul, is dear to the heart of his wife, because
through this he can give the fullest expression to his manly power. But
if such manifestations are made when the wife is not prepared to receive
them, and when she repels them and dreads the consequences, his physical
nature becomes associated, not with the pure joy of a longed-for
maternity, but with a deep sense of shame and degradation, with an
outrage on her nature, and with the protracted suffering and anguish of
an abhorred maternity. How can she respect the person of her husband?
How can she cherish, and proudly care for, the purity, health and
comfort of his physical nature? He has made it disgusting to her. She
regards it as the deadliest enemy of her purity and peace as a wife, and
as the bane of her home. She cannot look upon his person but as the
source of her degradation and ruin. In its presence, she feels as in the
presence of some hated reptile, from which her soul and senses shrink.
How can she lovingly cherish and care for it? How can the husband
respect himself, when by his own abuse of his wife and of himself, he
has made his physical manhood thus contemptible to her?

How can you, my friend, avoid this? How can you secure for your person
the loving care and respect of your wife? There is but one way; so
manifest yourself to her, in the hours of your most endearing
intimacies, that all your manly power shall be associated only with all
that is generous, just and noble in you, and with purity, freedom and
happiness in her. Make her feel that all which constitutes you a man,
and qualifies you to be her husband and the father of her children,
belongs to her, and is sacredly consecrated to the perfection and
happiness of her nature. Do this, and the happiness of your home is made
complete in righteousness. Your _body_ will be lovingly and reverently
cared for, because the wife of your bosom feels that it is the sacred
symbol through which a noble, manly love is ever speaking to her, to
cheer and sustain her.

Woman is ever proud, and justly so, of the manly passion of her husband,
when she knows it is controlled by a love for her, whose manifestations
have regard only to her elevation and happiness. The very power which,
when bent only on selfish indulgence, becomes a source of more shame,
degradation, disease and wretchedness, to women and to children, than
all other things put together, does but ennoble her, add grace and glory
to her being, and concentrate and vitalize the love that encircles her
as a wife, when it is controlled by wisdom, and consecrated to her
highest growth and happiness, and that of her children. It lends
enchantment to her person, and gives a fascination to her smiles, her
words and her caresses, which ever breathe of purity and of heaven, and
make her all lovely as a wife and mother to her husband and the father
of her child. Manly passion is to the conjugal love of the wife like the
sun to the rosebud, that opens its petals, and causes them to give out
their sweetest fragrance, and to display their most delicate tints; or
like the frost, which chills and kills it ere it blossoms in its
richness and beauty.

Beware, then, how you perpetrate this wrong against your wife, as you
would secure her love and respect. Trifle not with the function of
Maternity in her; for as this comes to her as the crowning joy and glory
of her earthly existence, or otherwise, will be her estimate of you as
her husband and the father of her children. See to it that she is never
subjected to the possibility of becoming a mother unless she calls for
it, and is ready with joy to assume the responsibilities of maternity.

But I will let woman tell her own story. She can speak on such a theme,
and tell her own needs and wrongs, as no man can. The following extracts
from a private letter will give you an insight into the wants and
feelings of a wife and mother in regard to this subject. When woman
speaks of her feelings while suffering an undesired maternity, let man
reverently give heed to her words:

  “My maternal experience has been varied. I have never been the
  recipient of a _designed_ maternity, but I have that within me which
  gives me an idea of what its joy and blessedness might be. I have
  never been forced, with _entire_ repugnance on my part, into the
  relation which resulted in conception; and yet I have suffered the
  keenest agonies in view of such a result.

  “In the first years of my married life, I had no thought but to submit
  to the passion of my husband, without regard to the consequences to
  myself. As every true woman does, living in conjugal relations, I
  desired to be caressed by my husband, and to be pressed to his manly
  bosom. I did not suppose it was incumbent on him to control himself.

  “In an unwelcome maternity, I have _sometimes_ felt a deep repugnance
  to the passion of my husband,—a sense of deep suffering and anguish
  through it; but I have usually been so encircled by love as to make me
  forget this, or rather, shun such thoughts as sinful. But since my
  husband and I have come to a truer knowledge of parentage, I have come
  to ‘love, honor and cherish’ those functions which I had before only
  feared and obeyed. I think this is not the feeling that married women
  usually have towards the physical manhood of their husbands. I never
  heard a woman admit that her thoughts rested on the physical nature of
  her husband with loving respect and womanly pride: but I have heard,
  not unfrequently, expressions of disgust instead.

  “I have known many instances in which the fathers of children,
  unintentionally and unwillingly conceived, became so repulsive to the
  mother, during gestation, that they would be made seriously ill by
  coming in contact with them, in any way; though ordinarily they would
  be agreeable and congenial.

  “I have heard many women say they would gladly strangle their
  children, born of undesired maternity, at birth, could they do so with
  safety to themselves. I believe, judging from a long and intimate
  acquaintance with many mothers, and from much conversation with them
  on this subject, that there are many children whose existence is
  undesigned by their fathers and undesired by their mothers. Yet among
  those heterogeneous and unnatural combinations called marriages, there
  is enough love to produce some tolerable specimens of humanity; and
  when there is any thing remarkable in development, there will be found
  physiological and psychological conditions sufficient to produce it.

  “No words can express the helplessness, the sense of personal
  desecration, the despair, which sinks into the heart of woman when
  forced to submit to maternity under adverse circumstances, and when
  her own soul rejects it. It is no matter of wonder that abortions are
  purposely procured; it is to me a matter of wonder that a single
  child, undesignedly begotten and reluctantly conceived, is ever
  suffered to mature in the organism of the mother. Her whole nature
  repels it. How can she regard its ante-natal development but with
  sorrow and shrinking?

  “Sensitive as woman ever is at such periods, she rarely meets with any
  special consideration; indeed, that very situation is too often made
  the occasion for increased passional indulgence on the part of the
  husband, or of neglect and contempt. Woman must have had, doubtless
  has, a very large amount of what you call the God-element in her
  nature, to enable her to do as well as she does in the function of
  Maternity, under such debasing and depressing influences.

  “The strength and energy of body and mind which were required properly
  to develop and give birth to _one_ child, have been often taxed to
  conceive and develop six or eight, or perhaps ten or twelve. Would it
  not be well to study economy in the function of Parentage, as well as
  in some other departments of domestic life?

  “There are few, very few, wives and mothers who could not reveal a
  sad, dark picture in their own experience, in their relations to their
  husbands and their children. Maternity, and the relation in which it
  originates, are thrust upon them by their husbands, often without
  regard to their spiritual or physical conditions, and often in
  contempt of their earnest and urgent entreaties. No joy comes to their
  hearts at the conception and birth of their children, except that
  which arises from the consciousness that they have survived the
  sufferings wantonly and selfishly inflicted on them.

  “There are facts enough illustrating the dire effects of an undesigned
  and an undesired maternity to move the whole earth to sorrow and
  repentance, if woman, as a wife and mother, dared give utterance to
  the wrongs inflicted upon her and her children. The living
  illustrations of woman’s wrongs, inflicted on her in the holy of
  holies of her home, by those who had promised to ‘love, cherish and
  protect’ her, do now fill the earth. To the influences bearing on the
  unborn babe, in consequence of the disregard, by the husband, of the
  conditions and wishes of the wife in reference to maternity, and the
  intercourse that leads to it, must we go to learn the causes of much
  of the wrong and suffering of this world.”

When woman’s rights in regard to Maternity, and to the relation that
leads to it, are truly understood and appreciated by man, then, and not
before, can marriage become what it was designed to be,—a diadem of
beauty, a crown of glory, to the husband and wife, and “the power of God
and the wisdom of God” unto salvation to the generations of the future.
Husbands! if you would secure the loving respect of your wives, you must
reverently regard their protest against an undesired Maternity.

                                                                H. C. W.




                              LETTER III.
                      THE CRIME AGAINST THE CHILD.


DEAR FRIEND:

In my last, I showed, at some length, the crime of an undesired
maternity against the _mother_; how it affects her mind towards the
father of her child; how it tends to destroy all love and respect for
him, instead of increasing them; how it destroys her self-respect,
strips her of the conscious pride and dignity of a loved and loving
wife, and reduces her to the feeling and condition of a degraded,
self-condemned victim of legalized sensualism. She feels polluted,
degraded, outraged; and that, too, through the very function of her
nature, which should have filled and thrilled her soul with conscious
pride and happiness.

THE CRIME AGAINST THE CHILD.—Allow me now to direct your attention to
this. Let the child of an undesigned and unwilling maternity arise
before your mind. Ponder what life is, and how it is affected by
birthright tendencies,—physical, intellectual and spiritual; see what a
struggle it is, at best, and how difficult it is for those of the
soundest bodies and healthiest souls, happily and successfully to meet
the conflict. Call to mind the two great facts alluded to in a former
letter, viz.: (1) That whatever comes to the child _before_ birth, must
come to it through the blood and organism of the mother. (2) That, as
this substance passes through her system, it must receive the impress of
her physical and mental conditions. Whatever _temporarily_ affects her
conditions, must _permanently_ affect the character and destiny of her
child.

You may grievously wrong your child, and subject it to physical and
mental tendencies that may deeply affect its character and happiness,
during its earthly existence, by subjecting it to the liability of
inheriting the unhealthy and imbecile conditions in which you and the
mother may be, at the time the relation was held in which it originated.
Mere sensual gratification was the sole and single motive that prompted
to the relation; and even in that, your wife had no part. Her heart, it
may be, not only prayed against conception, as a calamity more to be
dreaded than death, but this very horror of the consequences
disqualified her to participate in the relation, when it was entirely
mutual, and truly and rightly prompted. Her very soul shrank from it;
and she submitted to it merely to gratify you, or because she had been
taught to believe it a duty incumbent on all women who enter the married
relation,—a duty to which she _must_ submit, or be accounted a faithless
wife,—regardless of the wishes of her husband, and false to her
obligations as a wife.

Duty! Talk of _duty_ in such a relation! A _duty_ for a woman to submit
to such a relation, when her own soul not only does not sanction, but
loathes it! A _duty_ in a woman thus to lay her health, her
self-respect, and her very womanhood, on the altar of legalized
sensualism! A _duty_ to become a prostitute,—a mere tool of her
husband’s gratification! It is a horrid mockery! As well talk to her of
her _duty_ to cut her throat! No man, but a sensualist, could ever
accept the surrender of a woman’s person in such relation, when he knows
it is made without any call in her own nature, and merely to satisfy his
passion.

Your only object, it may be, in this relation, is _mere sensual
indulgence_. Not one thought or care for the welfare of the child that
may ensue enters your mind. Consequently, you are utterly indifferent to
your physical or mental conditions, at the time. Your passion being
excited, your only aim is, its gratification. Your wife may be in a
state of utter prostration, physically and mentally,—severe toil, deep
anxiety, sad disappointment, or some torturing care, may have exhausted
her energies, and reduced her to a state of imbecility, for the time
being. Despite all this, she is liable to conception. You heed not her
conditions nor her wishes, but demand indulgence, regardless of her
happiness or that of the child which may result therefrom. She submits,
rather than contend. Maternity ensues. The mother imparts no vitality to
the child in its conception. It is conceived in weakness, is developed
in joyless, lifeless imbecility, or intense anguish. It is born an
idiot, or without sufficient vital force to develop it into life with
the ordinary energies and faculties of a man or woman.

On all hands, society is full of the victims of such a relation,—of a
maternity forced on woman when, from various causes, body and soul are
prostrated, and too destitute of vital energy even for the ordinary
demands of daily life; how much more destitute of that fulness and vigor
of life, so necessary to the sublime and responsible act of true and
healthy conception! If ever the current of life should flow with deep,
concentrated, joyous energy in woman, it should be in the moment of
conception, when she takes charge of the germ of a new and immortal
life, and enters upon the sublime and overwhelming responsibilities of
maternity. Then, indeed, she needs that all the energies of her
womanhood should be in most perfect and healthful activity; then, if
ever, she should be filled “with all the fulness of God.”

But not only are the vital forces of your wife exhausted by other labors
and anxieties, but your own energies are, from various causes,
prostrated. Yet, excited by some artificial stimulant, and when the
vital forces of your manhood are powerless, you demand this relation
with your wife. Maternity is the result. What have you done for your
child? Imparted to it, not the true life and vigor of your manhood, but
its momentary imbecility. Your child, it may be, is rendered imbecile in
body and idiotic in mind, solely through your fault. You exhausted your
life, and then gave that exhausted, soulless life to your child. You
exercised no wise and manly forethought for your child. Its well-being
entered not into your designs; only your own gratification. Hence, for
your child’s sake, you used no exertions, by abstinence from exhausting
toil or enfeebling amusements and indulgences, to exalt and perfect your
physical and mental energies; but by debilitating pleasures, by
sleepless nights, spent in pursuit of amusement, by dissipating games,
and by exhausting indulgences in the use of narcotic and alcoholic
drugs, drinks and food, you are rendered imbecile to think, to feel, or
to act. And these conditions you entail on your child as its birthright,
lifelong, fearful legacy, from the effects of which no power can rescue
it. Can you do a greater wrong to your child? Can you commit against it
a greater crime? A living death is its doom.

When should man be a _living_ soul, if not in that relation in which he
originates a new immortal? In that moment, so replete with human
destiny, if ever, every nerve of his being should be filled and thrilled
with that creative energy, that concentrated, vitalizing power which
said, “Let there be light, and there was light;” and which says of
creation, “He spake, and it was done; he commanded, and it stood fast.”
So man, in that moment of sublime consecration of his manhood to its
purest and most august function, should have a great, energetic, living
soul, in a living body. He performs an act of deeper significance than
that which gave existence and glory to the sun and stars—an act, from
which is to arise a living soul, deathless as God in its being, and
capable of reaching unimaginable heights of wisdom and love.

Your child has claims which you cannot, without injustice,
ignore,—claims that reach beyond its birth, and even its conception. Its
first claim is, to a _designed_ existence, if it is to exist at all.
Only in such an existence can it hope for a true and noble nature. Only
in a relation, designed to give existence to a well-organized child, can
you exercise a true, rational, and tender forethought for your
offspring. The offspring of a relation held merely for the gratification
of one or both parents, of a mere chance maternity, how can it but
reflect with sorrow and bitterness on the wrong of its parents? The
child, as it comes to years of reflection, feels degraded in its origin.
No lofty aspirations, no tender love, no animating hopes, no earnest
prayer, no deep, holy longings, no vitalizing joy, no conscious pride
and dignity, no God, presided over the relation in which it originated;
but shrinking disgust in one parent, and brutal sensuality, and
indifference to its welfare, in the other. No _Gloria in Excelsis_ was
sung by angels or men over its conception or birth; but sensualism,
shame, anguish, and, it may be, curses deep and bitter, attended its
entrance into life. What must a child, as it grows to maturity, think of
an existence thus begun, and of those who could trifle with the deepest
and most potent memories of the past in their offspring? Would you thus
live in the hearts of your children? If not, then do them not this foul
wrong. On your part, let the existence of your child be a _designed_ and
a _longed-for_ existence. What proportion of cases of maternity result
from a relation held with a view to the development of a child? Few,
very few, compared to the number born. The relation was held without any
wish or design to have a child; but solely with a view to sensual
gratification. Consequently, the child must inherit, to some extent, the
conditions the parents happen to be in at the moment. The child is
robbed of a pure, true, thoughtful birthright, and is the offspring of
reckless, selfish passion, rather than of a tender, anxious, thoughtful
and far-seeing love. Never subject your wife to the possibility of a
maternity which, on your part, is undesigned, and, on her part,
undesired. Your reward will be great and sure, in the ever-growing love
and respect of your wife, in the healthful and harmonious organization
and upward tendencies of your children, and in the consciousness of an
ever-growing tenderness and nobleness of manhood in yourself.

The power of the mother over the child, after birth, is conceded to be
great; what, then, must it be before? Who can estimate it? Reasoning
from the facts I have stated, we should conclude it to be absolute, and
without limit. For good or for evil, it must be great. The organic and
constitutional tendencies of body and soul to health or disease, to good
or evil, are settled previous to birth. The character and destiny of the
future man or woman depend, essentially, on those ante-natal tendencies.
These depend on the influences that are brought to bear on the child
during that period. Whatever agencies bear, injuriously or otherwise, on
the mother, must control the unborn child with greater and more
permanent effect. What influence has an abhorred maternity on the
conditions of the mother? It must be great; but great as it is, it is
still greater and more abiding on the child. Its _post-natal_ life will
be more affected by those ante-natal influences, than by all that are
brought to bear on it after its birth. The crime against the mother is
great, but the crime against the child is greater, and more enduring and
terrible in its consequences.

When maternity is imposed on your wife without her consent, and contrary
to her appeal, how will her mind necessarily be affected towards her
child? It was conceived in dread, and in bitterness of spirit. Every
stage of its fœtal development is watched with a feeling of settled
repugnance. In every step of its ante-natal progress, the child meets
only with grief and indignation in the mother. She would crush out its
life, if she could. She loathed its conception; she loathed it in every
stage of its ante-natal development. She cannot love and cherish it, for
nought, it may be, is associated with its existence, from the beginning,
but pain and sorrow. Tender, cherishing, vitalizing love does not
preside over its conception and development, but grief and anguish.
Instead of fixing her mind on devising ways and means for the healthful
and happy organization and development of her child, before it is born,
and for its post-natal comfort and support, her soul is intent on its
destruction, and her thoughts devise plans to kill it.

In this, how often is she aided by others! There are those, and they are
called men and women, whose profession is to devise ways to kill
children before they are born. Those who do this would not hesitate to
kill them after they are born; for the state of mind that would justify
and instigate _ante-natal_ child-murder, would justify and instigate
_post-natal_ child-murder. Yet, public sentiment consigns the murderer
of post-natal children to the dungeon or the gallows; while the
murderers of ante-natal children are often allowed to pass in society as
honest and honorable men and women.

The unwelcome child is ever before the mother. She regards it as a
sacrilegious intruder into the domain of her life; an invader of the
holy of holies of her being. She had never called for it; it was thrust
upon her, as it were, by fraud and violence. Besides, it is the child of
one whom this very outrage has caused her to dread or despise. The child
is ever present to her, not as a pledge of love, an answer to the
earnest prayer of her wifely soul, as a source of living joy and
ennobling hopes; but as a witness of her shame and degradation, and of
the great wrong done her by its father, and by one whom she had loved
and trusted, but to be betrayed. She meets her innocent, unconscious
babe, at every step of its ante-natal development, with a frown, and
beats it back with threats and weapons of death.

What makes that mother feel so towards her unborn babe? It is to her an
_unwelcome_ child. Maternity is thrust upon her before she is prepared
for it. Her body shrinks from the suffering it brings to her; her soul
sanctions not, but abhors, its existence. God, speaking through the body
and soul of that mother, frowns on its conception, its development, and
its birth. Its mother, and the God of its mother, are conspiring against
the health, the happiness, the character and destiny, of the child, and
of the future man or woman. How can that child, as it comes to man’s or
woman’s estate, possibly be in harmony with God or man? Elements of
strife were incorporated, by its father’s agency, into its body and
soul, as its birthright inheritance.

It is vain to talk to her about cheerfully and joyfully submitting to
her condition, and, for her child’s sake, to give it a loving, joyous
welcome. She cannot, by an effort of will, nor by any course of
discipline, nor from considerations of duty, compel her nature to
acquiesce in such a wrong to herself and her child, and willingly and
joyfully accept a maternity thrust upon her in contempt of her dearest
and most sacred rights, and in opposition to her heart’s appeals for
mercy. She finds no call in her nature for a child; she cannot create it
by an effort of will. She is not yet prepared, mentally or physically,
to meet the sufferings and responsibilities of such a relation. She can
no more force herself into giving a loving reception to that unwelcome
child, and to that undesired maternity, than she can force herself into
a true love and respect for the father of such a child, and the doer of
this wrong.

Just so far as she was accessory to its conception, and a willing
partner in the relation in which it originated, she is responsible, and
worthy of condemnation; but she is not to blame for not joyfully
accepting a maternity thrust upon her without her consent. As well blame
a woman for not loving and respecting a husband thrust upon her by
parental, ecclesiastical, or civil authority, and from whom, by the
instincts of her nature, she is strongly repelled. As well blame the
flower for shrinking from the mildew that blights it, or the dove for
shrinking from the vulture that would rend it.

War is declared between that mother and her child before it is born; a
war that must be lasting as life,—a deadly conflict, to which the
happiness, and, it may be, the life of the child must be victimized. No
efforts of the mother of your child, after it is born, can make peace
between her and her child, and obliterate from its mind all traces of
the wrong done to it before it was born. And this internal, organic
discord, this war, must extend to you, the father, as well as to the
mother. The mother cannot feel toward your child, thus originated, as
she would had her soul rejoiced in its conception, its development and
birth, with a pure, concentrated joy, which such a maternity alone can
bring. After the child of an undesired maternity is born, pity for the
helpless babe, rather than a rapturous welcome to a longed-for treasure,
prompts her to care for it,—though facts demonstrate that a deadly hate
in the mother’s heart can pursue the offspring of such a maternity after
it is born. Yet before it is born, but one feeling fills her soul,—a
feeling of deep, settled hostility against its existence,—a feeling that
it has no right to be. Its existence is unsanctioned and unconsecrated
by its mother. The child struggles into life against the spirit of
murder in her heart. Talk of a mother’s joy over such a birth! It is
blasphemy against Maternity.

Pause, my friend, and let your thoughts dwell on this subject. You would
exalt and perfect human nature. You live but to people this earth with
nobler types of men and women. It is the only true and great end of
life. If you would labor for this sublime object, pause and consider
this crime, in its bearing on the mother towards your child, and through
her, on the character and destiny of that child. Enter into and
comprehend, if you can, the feelings which an undesired maternity must
excite in the mind of your wife towards your child. Measure, if you can,
the wrong done your child by giving it being under such circumstances.
See its helplessness, its innocence, and the crime you perpetrate
against it. Can that child love and respect you? Can it ever forgive
you? Can it ever be reconciled to you? In vain you talk to such a child
about filial gratitude and obedience. It will answer by pointing you to
_paternal_ wrong, inflicted on its helplessness. Disobedience,
ingratitude and defiance are constitutional,—bred in its bones,
organized into every fibre of its being.

Consider well the power your wife holds over your child, and over its
destiny as a man or woman, and ask—Shall that power be for good or evil?
Shall it be exerted to give your child a beautiful, healthy, vigorous
body, or a body corrupted and deformed by a painful and loathsome
disease? Shall it be used to secure to your child’s soul tenderness,
truth, justice, generosity and nobleness, or wrath, revenge, meanness
and falsehood?—to impress on its moral nature the stamp of Divinity, or
the stamp of a thief, a slaveholder, a pirate, a murderer, or an
assassin?

It is for you, the husband and father, to answer these questions.
_Mainly_, if not entirely, you are to decide whether this great power
shall be a blessing or a curse to your child. How? _Never impose on your
wife a maternity, except at the call of her own nature._ When she is
ready to take charge of the germ of a new life, and can joyfully welcome
the responsibilities and trials of its development and birth, then, and
_never till then_, impart it to her. Then will a tenderness ineffable, a
love that is all-hoping, all-enduring and all-pervading, and a joy
unspeakable and full of glory, preside, like a wise and loving
Providence, over the conception, ante-natal growth and education, and
the birth of your child. A heart, tender, loving and vigilant as the
heart of God, will watch over it for good. The perfection and happiness
of your child will be the one controlling motive of her life, and
whether she eat or drink, labor or rest, or whatever she does, she will
do all to the glory of that priceless and most welcome charge you have
committed to her care.

How ennobling, how imposing is Maternity, when thus bestowed and thus
accepted! How sublime its responsibilities, how pure its joys! How
heroic its sufferings, how august its martyrdom, when thus joyfully and
calmly endured! There is no heroism of earth so imposing, so sublime,
and so full of glory, as that of Maternity, when joyfully accepted, and
lovingly and calmly endured! No human act can be so potent and so
lasting in its results. But no agony is so appalling as that of a
Maternity from which the soul of woman shrinks with disgust and horror.

The character of individual and social man, and the destiny of the race,
are wrapped up in Maternity. Shall a function so replete with suffering
and responsibility be imposed on woman, against her prayers and her
tears, merely for the momentary gratification of man? Manhood as well as
womanhood, cries out against the outrage. All that is true and noble in
man says, “Forbear!” Only that which is sensual, brutal, devilish, can
perpetrate this wrong against the mother and child, or approve of it.

Woman would find rest and fulness of joy in man. She rushes to him as to
her tower of strength, to shelter and be sheltered to love and be loved,
to bless and be blessed. A love that knows no fear, a trust that fears
no danger, lay her in his bosom, and prompt to and consecrate the entire
surrender of her soul and body to his manly keeping. Will you call that
man true, noble or honorable, who can take advantage of a love so pure
and a trust so boundless, to impose on her a suffering and anguish, and
a responsibility, for which she is not prepared, and from which her soul
shrinks; thus placing her in an unnatural position in regard to her
child, and thus outraging his own offspring, by giving it an existence
loathed even by the mother who give it birth? What shall be said of the
man who will commit a deed so atrocious? A husband he is not; he ignores
the first principles of a true and noble manhood. He is but a selfish,
disgusting sensualist. A father he is not, deserving tender and loving
reverence from his wife, but an ANIMAL, whose brutal gratification is
the first law of life, and one whom neither mother nor child can
respect.

But I will reserve further remarks on this subject until my next letter.

                                                    Thine,      H. C. W.




                               LETTER IV.
  THE CRIME AGAINST THE CHILD, AS AFFECTING ITS ANTE-NATAL EDUCATION.


DEAR FRIEND:

In the preceding letter, I have shown how, and to what extent, a
maternity, undesigned by the father and undesired by the mother, affects
the organization, character and destiny, of the child. I wish to pursue
the question still further.

Life is before you,—a long and happy one, I trust. May it increase in
goodness and usefulness as it does in years! Your power is great, and
will be greater. Already the minds of thousands are deeply and
permanently influenced by you. I know that MAN, and not institutions or
dogmas, is the object of your devotion; that the all-controlling, ever
present sentiment of your life is, _the supremacy of man over his
incidents_. I know that you reverence man, not his incidents. You feel,
and in your life seek to embody the truth, that _man is eternal_, his
institutions transient and ever-changing. Man is the great _fact_; his
religious, social, governmental, ecclesiastical, literary, monetary and
commercial surroundings are merely passing incidents of his existence,
to be changed or cast away as suits his growth and convenience. Man is
the substance, all else the shadow. The appendages will be laid aside,
but man will live, deathless as God. You would never sacrifice man to
his incidents; the head to the hat, or the body to the coat,—the
enduring substance to the passing shadow.

You see and worship God in man, not in his incidents. In those relations
which bear most directly and powerfully on the development, purity and
nobility of your manhood, and on your character and destiny, you
recognize the most perfect manifestation of the Divine presence and
power. In them, the great thinking intellect and pulsating heart of the
universe,—the God-element of Nature,—speak to you as in nothing else.

Of all your relations, which is most potent to develop your manhood, to
unfold to yourself, and to all, the hidden wealth and depths of your
being; to vitalize and call into manly activity all the powers of your
physical and intellectual nature? Your soul promptly answers, “That of
the HUSBAND and the FATHER.” No man who has lived in those relations can
doubt the truth of your answer. God speaks to you through your wife and
child, as through no other being of the past or present. Through those
loved ones, He, as it were, renders himself visible, audible, tangible
to you, and you meet him and talk with him face to face. They are his
natural prophets and messiahs to you—the media through which the
God-element of the universe flows into you, quickening and vitalizing,
and arousing to energetic activity, all the powers of your manhood.
Through them, an influence is thrown upon and around you, which
silently, but surely, defines and shapes your plans of life, and
quickens, expands, and ennobles your affections. In them, a PRESENCE is
ever before you, whose beauty and brightness illuminate your pathway,
and which is ever beckoning you onward and upward, and breathing into
your soul a desire and a daring to reach the sublimest height of purity
and nobleness. In truth, you may say, in your wife and child are the
hidings of God’s power, to form your character and shape your destiny.

What, then, so important to you, as a true knowledge and just
appreciation of your relations as a husband and father? As a husband and
father, you can do more to elevate and perfect the human type, and to
save yourself, than you can in any other relation: political,
ecclesiastical, commercial and social relations are insignificant, in
comparison. I know you live but to glorify the nature you bear, and to
enjoy that glorified nature forever. Such being with you the chief end
of existence, I ask you to weigh, with candor and earnestness, the
following observations on THE ANTE-NATAL EDUCATION AND HISTORY OF MAN. I
have long been accustomed to consider human beings in connection with
three states, and to think, speak and write on the comparative influence
of these states on their character and destiny:

1. The state preceding birth, which I am accustomed to call the
_Ante-Natal_ state.

2. The state between birth and death, or the embodied state.

3. The state after death, or the disembodied state. The two last, the
_Post-Natal_ spheres or states.

Religion, government, education, commerce, agriculture, mechanics,
literature, the press, the convention,—these hitherto, have confined
attention, almost exclusively, to human life in its post-natal spheres,
embodied or disembodied. They take up human beings, _after_ they are
born, and seek to do for them what they may to promote their welfare;
and much of the doing consists in trying to undo what had been done for
them in the ante-natal state. To a great extent, in promoting the
education of children, this state has been ignored, as having no
connection with the character and destiny in the post-natal spheres.

Come, my friend, go with me back to that which Church and State have
overlooked, and view human beings between conception and birth. The
period is brief; but is it not important? Is it powerless? Are no
influences exerted and no events transpiring there, of sufficient moment
to render them worthy attention, in considering the history and
estimating the character of the individual man or woman, or of states
and nations?

Many years since, the conviction was settled in my mind, that that
period, though so brief, and hidden from observation in the very holy of
holies of the temple of life, has more to do in giving tone to our
feelings, intensity, activity and character to our passions and
appetites, direction to our thoughts and plans, and in moulding our
character and shaping our destiny, in the post-natal spheres of our
being, than all that is brought to bear on us after we are born. OUR
ANTE-NATAL HISTORY IS THE KEY TO OUR POST-NATAL LIFE. There is not a man
or woman who is not a living witness to the truth of this assertion.

I think it cannot be doubted, that much of the physical disease and
suffering, and much of the idiocy, insanity, and mental and moral
obliquity of our post-natal, embodied state, is the result of our
ante-natal organization. Much, indeed, is done for us before the germs
of our being leave the _paternal_ organism. They must, to a greater or
less extent, receive the impress of the father’s conditions of body and
soul; and he will do a service to the world who shall show to fathers
their responsibilities in this matter. But _Maternity_ is the subject
under consideration; and in discussing this, my concern with the germ is
after the mother takes charge of it. _The period between conception and
birth_ is that to which I would call your attention.

From a long and critical observation of facts, and a persevering effort
to trace the physical, intellectual, social and spiritual conditions and
phenomena of the individual and social lives of children and adults, in
the many thousands of families in which, for a longer or shorter time, I
have been an inmate, I long ago came to the conclusion, that to their
ANTE-NATAL EDUCATION, men and women are more beholden for their
healthful or diseased physical conditions, sufferings or enjoyments, and
for their mental and spiritual tendencies, their peculiarities of temper
and disposition, their aptitudes to truth or falsehood, to justice or
injustice, to love or hate, to peace or war, to temperance or
drunkenness, to forgiveness or revenge, to sexual purity or impurity, to
happiness or misery, than to all the influences that are brought to bear
on them, after they are born, to whatever age they may attain. These
tendencies, whether of body or soul, are mainly, if not entirely,
organized as fixed facts of existence in the individual man or woman, in
their ante-natal state. There is not a human being, there never was one,
and never will be, whose whole life is not essentially, constantly, and
in its minutest details instigated and directed, more or less, by
gestational influences.

If this be so, where are we to look for the forming and controlling
causes of human character and destiny, and of physical, mental, and
spiritual idiosyncrasies? Where shall we go to find the true foundations
of biography and history, and the controlling elements of all religions
and governments? Where go to find the mainsprings of war, slavery,
drunkenness, polygamy, licentiousness, and of all the sufferings,
anguish and woes of marriage and domestic life, that arise from the
abuse of the sexual element? Where go to find the cause of a repulsive
and loathed maternity, and of the horrors to which it leads? Where,
indeed, but to the germs of diseases, and the aptitudes to good or evil,
that were organized into the bodies and souls of men and women, as fixed
facts and elements of life, by influences that were brought to bear upon
them, through the maternal organism, between the periods of conception
and birth?

This ante-natal education makes the man and woman, the Religion and
Government, the Church and State, the social, educational, and
commercial customs and institutions; and whoever attempts to write the
biography of an individual, or the history of a Church or State, without
reference to that education, and its controlling power over human
character and destiny, fails to present the whole truth. He fails to
trace effects to their causes, and must necessarily give a partial or
perverted view of the phenomena of life.

“_Maxima debetur pueris reverentia._” [The greatest reverence is due to
childhood.] Thus sang the Roman poet Juvenal, two thousand years ago.
Reverence childhood! If this be so important after the child is born,
how much more reverence is due to _ante-natal_ childhood? Be thy hands
clean, thy robes spotless, thy looks, thy tones, thy mien, tender,
sweet, loving, reverential, and thy heart filled and thrilled with pure
worship, as thou enterest the temple of man’s ante-natal life! With
these feelings, enter with me the very holy of holies of that temple,
over which God spreads his wings of tenderest love and highest wisdom,
as protecting cherubims and seraphims. Behold, there, the unconscious
future man or woman, in a process of gestational organization and
development, subjected to influences over which he or she has no
control, and receiving a physical, intellectual, social and spiritual
education that is to decide the character, for good or evil, for
happiness or misery, in the great future that is opening before them.

See what a future is wrapped up in that unconscious embryo man or woman!
It may be that the fates of states and empires are being inscribed, by
some unseen power, on that body and soul. Already that unformed child
may hold in its grasp the destinies of millions and of ages. But who is
the educator? Who guides the pen that is inscribing peace or war,
liberty or slavery, life or death, to those millions and those ages, and
the scroll of destiny to states and kingdoms, to religions and
governments on the soul of that unborn babe? THE MOTHER. Through her
must come every element essential to constitute the body and soul of
that child; and, as it passes through her system, it must receive the
stamp of her physical, social and spiritual conditions.

Keep in mind the great fact, that the mental states of the mother,
during gestation, must necessarily and permanently affect every particle
of that substance which goes to make the organization and growth of her
child, for good or evil. Whatever injuriously affects her thoughts and
feelings, must permanently affect the physical, social, intellectual and
moral aptitudes of her child.

Suppose that you have, undesignedly and without her consent, imposed
maternity on your wife. On discovering the fact, it becomes most
repulsive to her nature. She is not prepared to bear the cross and
endure the crucifixion. Instantly, her soul is filled with murderous
intent. She resolves to nip and crush the opening bud of life,—to
procure abortion,—that is, to commit the deed of ante-natal
child-murder. She does not feel that it is _her_ child. She may regard
it as _yours_, but she cannot acknowledge it as her own; and though it
must receive its gestational development in her organism, she cannot
tenderly and lovingly cherish and guard it, as bone of her bone, flesh
of her flesh, and soul of her soul. It is so _in fact_, but not in her
_feelings_. She asked not for it; her soul repels it as an intruder,
thrust upon her without her consent, and in contempt, it may be, of her
earnest remonstrance,—for thus it often is. The child, she feels, has no
right to an existence at her expense, and who shall say it has? An
uninvited and hated intruder is exhausting her vital energies, and
robbing her of that which no earthly treasures can ever restore or
recompense. Through her physical suffering and mental anguish, an
unbidden and loathed guest is feeding and thriving on her heart’s blood.
Desperation, and the bitterness of death, are in her heart. MURDER fills
her soul towards your unconscious and innocent babe.

Who is responsible? On whom rests the guilt? It is your work. You forced
that heavy burden upon her, and compelled her to bear it. You thrust
your child, as an intruder, into the sacred domain of her life, to
derive existence through her organism and at her expense, knowing that
she was not prepared to welcome it, and to bend the forces of her nature
to its growth and support; and contrary, it may be, to her earnest
entreaties that she might be spared this pain and anguish till she was
ready joyfully to welcome them. But you heeded not her prayer; you
assumed the right to decide for her when she was prepared to endure
these trials, and under what circumstances she should be a mother. You
must have your stated gratification; you have abused your manhood and
your wife, till this indulgence, as you think, has become as essential a
want of your life as your daily food,—as the drunkard feels that alcohol
is as essential as air to his existence and happiness; and so you impose
on her a maternity which her soul abhors. You horribly tax her vital
energies, “_without her consent_.” Murder is in her heart towards the
uninvited and hated intruder you have introduced into the sanctuary of
her life.

That mother, whose heart is thus filled with murder towards your child,
is its educator! Into her hands you committed its destiny; and in the
very act of so doing, you aroused in her heart the spirit of murder
against the unconscious, innocent being whom she is to nourish into
life. In the very act of committing the germ of the new immortal to her,
you destroyed in her the power to be its loving, nursing mother. You
knew that she would not and could not love and reverence it, and do
justice to it; that she would hate it, and kill it if she could. All
this you knew, yet you forced the charge upon her!

Suppose your child were born; would you commit its education and destiny
to one, who, as you knew, would cherish murder in her heart towards it,
who would “get rid of it” (as the phrase is), i.e., kill it, if she
could without injury to herself,—yes, and kill it although at the risk
of death to herself, such being her dread and her loathing of the
charge? You would, yourself, be the murderer, if you did. Should you
commit the _post-natal_ education and happiness of your child to such a
woman, knowing her utter repugnance to the charge, and her determination
to “get rid of it” if she could,—would you not be responsible for the
consequences, whether she killed it, or whether she preserved it alive,
only to infuse into it a deadly wrath and revenge towards you, and
towards all of human kind? You would. You knew she loathed its existence
when you thrust it upon her, and that she would destroy the young life
if she could; and that, if it lived to grow up under the training of
such a spirit, it must be at war, in heart and life, with all its
surroundings, must be unloved and unloving, hated and hating, and an
object of anxiety and dread to all with whom it might chance to be
associated.

What else do you do, when you impose on your wife a maternity unasked
and abhorred? You commit the development and education of your child,
during the most important and susceptible period of its existence, to
one who assures you she is not prepared for the charge, who entreats you
to spare her, and who loathes the very thought of its existence. Every
element of her womanly nature, for the time being, recoils from its
presence in her system. She pleads that you would spare her this burden,
at this time, and until her nature calls for it, and is prepared
joyfully to meet the martyrdom maternity must bring to her. Heedless of
her prayers, and, it may be, of threats of death to your child, you
demand the surrender of her person to your passion. Maternity ensues.
Murder enters her heart towards your child at the same time. She tries
to “get rid of it,”—to murder it. She succeeds. The young life you had
committed to her care is nipped in the bud, as you were assured it would
be before you resigned it to her keeping. Where rests the
responsibility? On you, primarily and mainly. You murdered your own
child, not, indeed, with your own hands,—you drove another to do the
desperate deed, and that other, your wife, who came to you with a loving
and trusting heart, to save and to be saved; and you, to gratify your
selfish passion, drove her to the commission of the crime of ante-natal
child-murder,—a crime that must forever weigh upon her soul like a
mountain of guilt and shame; a deed, after the doing of which, no true
woman can ever, in this life, stand proud and stainless, in conscious
innocence and dignity, before the tribunal of her womanhood. She has
done a deed for which great Nature can find no excuse but ignorance; but
which, even when done in ignorance, she regards as a violation of her
just laws, and punishes as such, with appropriate penalties,—the loss of
self-respect, and the consciousness of degradation.

Yet all this suffering, anguish, crime and conscious degradation, you,
the husband, have forced upon her, solely for the momentary, and, under
the circumstances, most unnatural, gratification of your sensual
passion,—a passion which, when controlled by manly love and wisdom, and
held in abeyance to the health, purity, and happiness of your wife and
children, would bring only honor to their hearts and to your home, but
which, when thus indulged without regard to the wishes and conditions of
your wife, and merely for your personal pleasure, spreads crime,
pollution, misery and death, all around.

How dare you, how dare any husband, commit the destiny of his child into
the hands of one, who, as he knows, thus loathes the thought of its
existence? How can you subject your child to the possibility of such a
gestational organization and development; such an ante-natal education;
or force upon your wife the suffering and anguish of a loathed and hated
maternity, or the necessity of doing a deed from which the soul of every
noble woman must shrink with sickening horror? You could not do this
wrong to your wife and child, till your manhood was sunk in the mire of
disgusting sensualism.

A loathed and hated maternity! A woman, a mother, shrinking with disgust
and horror from the thought of giving existence to her child! A mother’s
heart throbbing with murder toward the child over whose development and
education it is presiding! Do you say this is strong language?—too
strong? That it cannot be? Do you say a mother does not, cannot, hate
and loathe her unborn babe? Why, then, does she kill it? Her spirit is
known by its fruit. Is not her whole soul bent on its destruction, even
at the risk of her own health and life?

“Abortion!” “Get rid of it!” Gentle terms, these; respectable, no doubt,
as some count gentle and respectable; but used to cover a most foul,
unnatural deed. _Ante-natal child-murder_ alone can truly express the
nature of the act. If no murderous hate is in the mother’s heart, why
does she kill the child? If you saw a mother seeking to kill her child
after it was born, knowing that she did it because its existence was
hateful to her, and because she did not wish to bear the burden of its
nursing and training, would you not conclude that her heart was filled
with murder towards it? So when a woman is willing to imperil her own
life, to outrage every womanly element of her being, and forfeit the
conscious innocence and respect of her own soul, to inflict death upon
her unborn child, you may be sure that a deep and terrible loathing and
hatred are in her heart towards the new and expanding life which the
husband for mere sensual gratification, has thrust upon her.

What means the wide-spreading disposition among men and women to procure
and to palliate the murder of children before they are born? One thing
is surely indicated by it, namely, the _increasing_ sensualism of men,
and their determination to gratify it without regard to consequences to
their wives and children. It is a swift witness against their purity and
nobleness, and shows an utter recklessness in the pursuit of sensual
pleasure. It also opens the frightful depths to which woman can fall and
has fallen. How many women of New England have on their souls, at this
hour, the ineffaceable stain of ante-natal child-murder? How many bear
in their physical organism the incurable results of this crime? How many
families are now suffering from it? Go ask the men and women doctors,
who, for gold, perpetrate this crime, and who shamelessly advertise
their infamy. Tens of thousands of wives and mothers are to be seen, all
over the country, at once the perpetrators and victims of this cruel and
disgusting act; all, all to administer to the sensualism of men, who are
called _husbands_! Husbands! the guilt is mainly yours; and the
damnation is just. Beneath your foul wrong to their nature, your wives
sink, and you must go down with them.

Ponder the following extract from a private letter, containing the
experience of a wife and mother, in regard to enforced and hated
maternity and ante-natal child-murder. The letter is of recent date; the
writer and her family are known to me personally:

  “Before we married, I informed him [the husband] of my dread of having
  children. I told him I was not yet prepared to meet the sufferings and
  responsibilities of maternity. He entered into an arrangement to
  prevent it, for a specified time. This agreement was disregarded.
  After the legal form was over, and he felt that he could now indulge
  his passion without loss of reputation, and under legal and religious
  sanctions, he insisted on the surrender of my person to his will. He
  violated his promise at the beginning of our united life. That fatal
  bridal night! it has left a cloud on my soul and on my home, that can
  never pass away on earth. I can never forget it. It sealed the doom of
  our union, as it does of thousands.

  “He was in feeble health; so was I; and both of us mentally depressed.
  But the sickly germ was implanted, and conception took place. We were
  poor and destitute, having made no preparations for a home for
  ourselves and child. I was a stricken woman. In September, 1838, we
  came to ——, and settled in a new country. In the March following, my
  child, developed under a heart throbbing with dread and anguish at the
  thought of its existence, was born. After three months’ struggle, I
  became reconciled to my, at first, unwelcome child. But the impress of
  my impatience and hostility to its existence, previous to its birth,
  was on my child, never to be effaced; and to this hour, that child is
  the victim of an undesired maternity.

  “In one year, I found I was again about to be a mother. I was in a
  state of frightful despair. My first-born was sickly and very
  troublesome (how could it be otherwise?), needing constant care and
  nursing. My husband chopped wood for our support. Of the injustice of
  bringing children into the world to such poverty and misery, I was
  then as sensible as now. I was in despair. I felt that death would be
  preferable to maternity under such circumstances. A desire and
  determination to get rid of my child entered into my heart. I
  consulted a lady friend, and by her persuasion and assistance, killed
  it. Within less than a year, maternity was again imposed upon me, with
  no better prospect for doing justice to my child. It was a most
  painful conviction to me; I felt that I could not have another child
  at that time. All seemed dark as death. I had begged and prayed to be
  spared this trial again, till I was prepared to accept it joyfully;
  but my husband insisted on his gratification, without regard to my
  wishes and conditions.

  “I consulted a physician, and told him of my unhappy state of mind,
  and my aversion to having another child, for the present. He was ready
  with his logic, his medicines and instruments, and told me how to
  destroy it. After experimenting on myself three months, I was
  successful. I killed my child about five months after conception.

  “A few months after this, maternity was again forced upon me, to my
  grief and anguish. I determined, again, on the child’s destruction;
  but my courage failed as I came to the practical deed. My health and
  life were in jeopardy; for my living child’s sake, I wished to live. I
  made up my mind to do the best I could for my unborn babe, whose
  existence seemed so unnatural and repulsive. I knew its young life
  would be deeply and lastingly affected by my mental and physical
  conditions. I became, in a measure, reconciled to my dark fate, and
  was as resigned and happy as I could be under the circumstances. I had
  just such a child as I had every reason to expect. I could do no
  justice to it. How could I?

  “Soon after the birth of my child, my husband insisted on his
  accustomed indulgence. Without any wish of my own, maternity was again
  forced upon me. I dared not attempt to get rid of the child, abortion
  seemed so cruel, so inhuman, unnatural, and repulsive. I resolved
  again, for my child’s sake, to do the best I could for it. Though I
  could not joyfully welcome, I resolved quietly to endure, its
  existence.

  “After the birth of this child, I felt that I could have no more to
  share our poverty and to suffer the wrongs and trials of an unwelcome
  existence. I felt that I had rather die at once, and thus end my life
  and my power to be a mother together. My husband cast the entire care
  of the family on me. I had scarcely one hour to devote to my children.
  My husband still insisted on his gratification. I was the veriest
  slave alive. Life had lost its charms. The grave seemed my only
  refuge, and Death my only friend.

  “In this state, known as it was to my husband, he thrust maternity
  upon me twice. I employed a doctor to kill my child, and in the
  destruction of it, in what should have been the vigor of my life,
  ended my power to be a mother. I was shorn of the brightest jewel of
  my Womanhood. I suffered, as woman alone can suffer, not only in body,
  but in bitter remorse and anguish of soul.

  “All this I passed through, under the terrible, withering
  consciousness, that it was all done and suffered solely that the
  passion of my husband might have a momentary indulgence. Yet such had
  been my false religious and social education, that, in submitting my
  person to his passion, I did it with the honest conviction that, in
  marriage, my body became the property of my husband. He said so; all
  women to whom I applied for counsel, said it was my duty to submit,
  that husbands expected it, had a right to it, and must have this
  indulgence, whenever they were excited, or suffer; and that in this
  way alone could wives retain the love of their husbands. I had no
  alternative but silent, suffering submission to his passion, and then
  procure abortion, or leave him, and thus resign my children to the
  tender mercies of one with whom I could not live myself. Abortion was
  most repulsive to every feeling of my nature. It seemed degrading,
  and, at times, rendered me an object of loathing to myself.

  “When my first-born was three months old, I had a desperate struggle
  for my personal liberty. My husband insisted on his right to subject
  my person to his passion, before my babe was two months old. I saw his
  conduct then in all its degrading and loathsome injustice. I pleaded,
  with tears and anguish, for my own and my child’s sake, to be spared;
  and had it not been for my helpless child, I should then have ended
  the struggle by bolting my legal bonds. For its sake, I submitted to
  that outrage, and to my own conscious degradation. For its sake, I
  concluded to take my chance in the world with other wives and mothers,
  who, as they assured me, and as I then knew, were all around me,
  subjected to like outrages, and driven to the degrading practice of
  abortion.

  “But, even then, I saw and argued the justice of my personal rights in
  regard to Maternity, and the relation that leads to it, as strongly as
  you do now. I saw it all as clearly as you do. I was then, amid all
  the degrading influence that crushed me, true and just in my womanly
  intuitions. I insisted on my right to say when and under what
  circumstances I would accept of him the office of Maternity, and
  become the mother of his child. I insisted that it was for me to say
  when and how often I should subject myself to the liability of
  becoming a mother. But he became angry with me; claimed ownership over
  me; insisted that I, as a wife, was to submit to my husband, ‘_in all
  things_;’ threatened to leave me and my children, and declared I was
  not fit to be a wife. Fearing some fatal consequence to my child or to
  myself, being alone, destitute, and far from helpful friends, in the
  far West, and fearing that my little one would be left to want, I
  stifled all expressions of my honest convictions, and ever after kept
  my aversion and painful struggles in my own bosom.

  “In every respect, so far as passional relations between myself and
  husband are concerned, I have ever felt myself to be a miserable and
  abject woman. I now see and feel it most deeply and painfully. If I
  was with a child in my arms, I was in constant dread of all personal
  contact with my husband, lest I should have a new maternity thrust
  upon me, and be obliged to wean one child before its time, to give
  place to another. In my misery, I have often cried out, ‘O God! is
  there no way out of this loathsome bondage?’

  “It was not want of kindly feelings towards my husband that induced
  this state of mind, for I could and did endure every privation and
  want without an unkind feeling or word, and even cheerfully, for his
  sake. But every feeling of my soul did then, does now, and ever must,
  protest against the cruel and loathsome injustice of husbands towards
  their wives, manifested in imposing on them a maternity uncalled for
  by their own nature and most repulsive to it, and whose sufferings and
  responsibilities they are unprepared and unwilling to meet.

                                                    “Yours,
                                                                “—— ——.”

“Strong language!”—“Too strong and sweeping epithets!” Can you, as a
man, a husband and a father, read the above extract, and feel or say
that my language is too strong? The above is the experience of a living
wife and mother, nearly _verbatim_ as written by herself. It is a
simple, unvarnished, affecting story, but bearing on its face the stamp
of truth, and the evidence of a sense of conscious injustice inflicted
by the husband, and of a degradation self-inflicted, solely to escape
what seemed to her a greater evil. Can such “loathsome injustice,” on
the part of husbands and fathers, towards their wives and unborn
children, be reprobated in too strong terms?

Husbands! it is your licentiousness that drives your wives to a deed so
abhorrent to their every wifely, womanly and maternal instinct; a deed
which ruins the health of their bodies, prostitutes their souls, and
makes marriage, maternity, and womanhood itself, degrading and
loathsome. No terms can sufficiently characterize the cruelty, meanness,
and disgusting selfishness and injustice of your conduct, when you
impose on them a maternity so detested as to drive them to the
desperation of killing their unborn children, and often themselves.

Is it a wonder that wives seek to justify themselves in resorting to
ante-natal child-murder? I do not wonder at it. The wonder is, that a
woman should live one hour, as a wife, with one who imposes on her a
repulsive maternity, thus doing to her, and her child, the greatest
possible wrong; or who can, for one moment, subject her to the liability
of becoming a mother, when her own nature repels the office. One such
maternity, imposed after the husband knows that his wife shrinks from
it, should lead every woman to “bolt the legal bond” that binds her to
such a man. If she does not, but submits to the injustice, she wrongs
her child, her husband, and her own soul. The same plea may be offered
in extenuation of ante-natal child-murder, under circumstances of
enforced, repulsive maternity, that is offered in justification of
Margaret Garner, the fugitive-slave mother, who cut the throat of one
child and threw another into the river, to save them from the savage
clutch of licensed kidnappers.

_Ante-natal child-murder,—a mother killing her unborn babe to save it
from a worse doom!_ It is a fearful alternative; one whose results to
the soul of the mother are no less deadly than to the forming body of
her child. It prostitutes, crucifies, murders, whatever is pure, lovely,
wifely, motherly and womanly in her soul; and, for the time being, as it
were, blots from it the superscription and image of God. She murders her
unborn babe, and often herself, to save herself and child from what she
considers a more loathsome and repulsive doom. Who can harshly and
coarsely condemn her? She feels that death to herself and babe, at her
own hands, is far preferable, and less criminal, than a loathed
maternity, and the birth of an unwelcome and hated child. To save
herself and child from slavery, the slave mother cuts its throat, and
then her own. The wife, to save herself and child from what she regards
as a no less horrible doom, imposed by the husband, destroys her unborn
child, and brings death to her own soul, if not to her body.

O man! where is thy manhood, that thou canst inflict this wrong on the
woman, who, with an all-trusting love, lays herself in thy bosom,
reposing fearless confidence in thy manly love and power to shelter her
from harm? Husband! where is thy love, thy justice, thy tenderness, thy
manliness, thy conscience, thy God, that thou canst impose these
sufferings and responsibilities on thy wife, despite her tears and
entreaties to be spared till she is ready joyfully to welcome them for
thy sake and her own? Fathers! where is your reverence for your
offspring, your tender regard for the claims of your unborn children,
and your respect for all that qualifies you to be fathers and your wives
mothers, that you beget children to ante-natal murder, or to the, if
possible, more terrible doom of an existence undesired, and abhorrent to
the mothers that bore them?

Husbands! listen to the voice of God, speaking to you through your
wives, and, in the name of those most dear to your hearts, and, most
essential to the happiness and glory of your life and your homes, give
heed to their protests against an undesigned and repulsive maternity!

                                                                H. C. W.




                               LETTER V.
               THE WIFE’S APPEAL—THE HUSBAND’S RESPONSE.


DEAR FRIEND:

In the three preceding letters, I have endeavored to present to you the
crime of an undesigned and undesired Maternity, especially in its
bearing on the mother and the child. I have shown how it wrongs the
mother by crushing out of her heart her love and respect for her
husband, and converting them into a settled feeling of bitterness and
contempt: and also by filling her with feelings of murderous hostility
towards her child, and driving her to deeds which her soul abhors,—thus
destroying her self-respect, and making her to seem like a loathsome and
degraded object in her own estimation. I have shown, also, how it wrongs
the child, by depriving it of a mother’s loving sympathy, by forcing it
into an existence that is detested by father and mother, by stamping on
it, before birth, disease and crime, and tendencies to all that is evil,
and thus subjecting it to the detestation of its fellow-beings, in its
future manhood or womanhood. The father perpetrates the deepest crime
against the child, by committing its ante-natal education to the hands
of one to whom its very existence is her abhorrence and loathing. What
greater crime could a husband and father commit against his wife and
child? None; no, _none_!

In this letter, I will give you the experience of a husband and wife, as
given by themselves, and by a mutual friend, who is also a wife and a
mother. I extract from their letters with few omissions. See, in the
experience of this wife and mother, the deep, unutterable anguish, and
the deeper woe of conscious degradation, to which woman, in her mistaken
notions of conjugal duty, her fear of losing a husband’s love and
confidence, and her horror of an undesired maternity, will subject
herself. Read over her experience, as detailed by her friend and
herself, and then say if any crime man can commit, can surpass that
which husbands and fathers often do to their wives and children, merely
for the momentary gratification of their sensual passions:

  “Some fifteen years ago, a man of culture, and engaged in public life,
  was united in marriage with an intimate friend of mine. With pride and
  confidence, he selected her from a large and admiring circle of
  friends, as one embodying his ideal of womanly excellence. My friend
  was thought a fortunate girl (only seventeen), and many thought him
  quite as fortunate. They were much in society, and she began to enjoy
  life intensely.

  “She was too much a woman not to desire offspring some time, but she
  felt unprepared to have maternity forced upon her youth and
  inexperience. It came at a time when her husband’s calling led him
  much from home, to mix in the society she so much enjoyed, and which
  she felt was contributing to make her what she so much desired to
  be,—her husband’s fitting and equal companion. It was not without a
  severe struggle she resigned these advantages and checked her
  aspirations. However, she submitted, though she keenly felt the
  sacrifice.

  “Though overwhelmed with the greatness of her responsibilities, and an
  undefined dread of physical suffering, she was determined not to
  appear weak, but bravely to meet and bear the burden imposed upon her.
  Her husband was absent when the trial hour came; but when he returned,
  he took his babe and wife to his bosom with pride and joy, though its
  gestational development had, apparently, scarcely given him an anxious
  thought.

  “My friend’s future looked bright. She did not see or understand the
  fact, that she was to continue to develop the germs of human beings
  into life, with little sustaining help from the father, whose caresses
  generally ended in exhausting her vital powers by passional
  indulgence. She did not complain, but rather rejoiced, as she saw her
  other powers of attraction to her husband depart one by one, that she
  was so organized as to be able to meet what she knew he considered an
  essential want of his nature.

  “Eleven years passed, at which time she gave birth to her sixth child.
  She was a devoted mother, of a joyous spirit, and possessed of
  wonderful elasticity. But woman cannot be entirely happy in maternity
  alone, without the presence and sustaining power of her husband. If
  she is a true wife, she desires to be more to her husband than merely
  the mother of his children.

  “Her husband made for her a beautiful material home, and seemed happy
  when with her; but he was much away; he sought other pleasures, social
  and intellectual, in which she could not participate;—she must stay at
  home, alone, with her children. Little did he know the trials of
  patience and strength in his wife, in being compelled to bear the
  responsibility of the health and training of her little ones alone.
  The world called her a happy wife, and she felt that she ought to be
  so; but a dark cloud was coming over her once joyous spirit. She began
  to realize the fact, so fatal to a wife’s happiness, that her husband
  did not feel her to be his equal, and a fitting companion to meet his
  social and intellectual necessities. When he brought home a friend,
  she listened to conversations and discussions in which she could not
  participate. She felt keenly the growing distance between them, and
  she knew too well how it had come about.

  “She quietly made up her mind to have no more children. How did she
  propose to bring it about? Not by asking her husband to deny himself
  his accustomed indulgence; no, that, she thought, would be to cut
  herself off from her strongest hold on his affection and confidence,
  and to sever the last link of the chain that bound them together. She
  did not expect that any precaution would enable her to escape
  conception. She brought herself to do what was most repugnant to her
  nature, and which, as she felt, would destroy her self-respect, and
  make her, in her own estimation, a degraded woman, namely, TO PROCURE
  ABORTION.

  “The first shock given to her constitution by this abuse of her nature
  was comparatively light. But once did not suffice. As a longer
  interval passed without a new-born babe than ever before, she had
  begun to take her place by her husband’s side in society, earnestly
  praying that she might be spared maternity evermore. Her husband
  delighted to have her with him. He felt that he had a right, by law
  and the customs of society, to his gratification; he persevered in
  demanding it, and she continued to yield. Several times in four years
  did she nip the young flower of fœtal life in the bud, and each time
  told more and more terribly on her constitution, until the power of
  conception was nearly destroyed, at little more than thirty-five years
  of age. She was shorn of her Womanhood, and became a sickly,
  broken-down wife and mother, in the very spring-time, as it were, of
  her life, being driven frequently to perpetrate a degrading outrage
  upon herself, or endure a maternity abhorrent to her soul;—and all to
  gratify the sensual passion of her husband, thinking thereby to secure
  his affection and respect. How fatally mistaken! By yielding, she
  strengthened his _passion_, but not his love.

  “Reflecting on her sad experience, in the light of your book on
  ‘Marriage and Parentage,’ which I had placed in her hands, she saw
  clearly where the wrong had been, but for a long time felt powerless
  to destroy what she regarded as her last hold on her husband. He was
  absent, and I prevailed on her to write and lay the matter frankly and
  plainly before him, and send him your book. She was then prostrated in
  body and soul by the last outrage upon her womanly and maternal
  nature. She wrote, and, hoping that you may do good with these
  letters, the husband and wife have granted me the privilege of copying
  portions of them for you. Here is a part of hers to him:

  “‘MY DEAR HUSBAND:

  “‘I feel like lying down and weeping that I have become unworthy,
  intellectually and spiritually, of mating with you; but _love_ is the
  foundation of true marriage, is it not? and I feel strong in my
  love-nature. It is high, and deep, and rich, and who shall say, if
  rightly cultivated, what flowers of intellect and spirituality might
  not blossom out from its soil?

  “‘My husband! forgive me if I say, that I deeply and sadly feel that
  my Womanhood has been robbed of its most precious charm, for _your_
  sake, through a weak indulgence and subjection to that in you which is
  lower than the spiritual. My body has been painfully desecrated,
  perhaps not more by your act than mine. You suffer the loss of that
  refining and ennobling influence which only an _undefiled_ woman can
  impart to man.

  “‘In view of our past, words cannot express my remorse and
  self-condemnation; but believe me, the bitterest suffering is caused
  to me by the knowledge that through this sin and misery, I am rendered
  incapable of becoming to you a tithe of what I desire to be. How can
  you do otherwise than shrink from the wreck I am fast becoming? And
  though I may feel, in my moments of anguish and remorse, that _you_
  are as much the cause of my mental and physical wreck and imbecility
  as I am, God grant I may not unjustly murmur or accuse you!

  “‘It is said, “Men never love complaining women.” Alas! if they
  treated their wives with half the respect and tender consideration
  they do other women, there would be less ground for complaint. I am
  convinced, _that in proportion as woman yields to the demands of
  animal passion in her husband, in that same ratio he loses his love
  and respect for her_. By bitter and humiliating experience, this
  conviction is forced upon me.

  “‘My husband! I love you. The power lies in you to bless and save me;
  the power lies in me to bless and save you; but have we not cursed
  each other instead? I cry unto you for life,—will you give me death? I
  would make my Womanhood a crown of glory to your life, your Manhood to
  mine. Shall we allow the very life-essence of our being to be
  exhausted in sensual indulgence, till we lose the power to feel and
  appreciate a pure spiritual love? My heart is reaching out to you for
  life, at the same time that my body is suffering untold agonies from
  the outrages perpetrated on my nature to escape the anguish and horror
  of an unwelcome maternity; outrages which have polluted and humbled my
  soul, and nearly destroyed my body—all for your sake; that I might
  retain your love and respect.

  “‘I would rather lay down my life now, than live without your love.
  Can we not love purely and nobly, without prostituting that love in
  mere sensual indulgence? My soul would arise and go to you as an
  inspiration from God; but I am suffering, and a realization of my
  present condition, my physical diseases, and mental anguish, and the
  knowledge that it was all caused by having maternity put upon me when
  I was not prepared joyfully to meet its trials and responsibilities,
  and the consciousness of the terrible outrage that I have been driven
  to perpetrate on myself and your unborn children, harden my soul, and
  lower me in my own opinion, so that I do now feel, and shall yet more
  deeply feel, if this function is still to be imposed upon me, that I
  am unworthy to appear in society. But for the consciousness that your
  passion has been, unconsciously and ignorantly, it may be, the primary
  cause of my misery and conscious degradation, I should scarcely dare
  to claim the right any more to rest in your bosom as your wife. We
  have both erred.

  “‘You love my person; you worship the _animal_ in me. If you love not
  my mind, my heart and soul more, and feel not more reverence and
  worship for the God in me than for the animal, if I am unworthy and
  unable to meet the wants of your intellectual and spiritual nature,
  PERISH ALL OUTWARD BONDS! Tell me, have I no power to hold you by any
  bonds but the sensualistic? Has my soul no power over you? If this be
  so, let me no longer seek to hold you at all. It crushes me, and
  overwhelms me with conscious degradation, to feel that I have no power
  over your intellectual and moral nature; that you come to me, caress
  me, and call me WIFE, only that I may administer to your sensual
  pleasure, and that you have no fond regard and loving adoration for
  me, except for my mere outward, physical womanhood. I cannot live so,
  feeling that your presence and caresses are ever to be but a prelude
  to the surrender of my person to your animal passion.

  “‘I know I have powers of soul, which, if suffered to be developed,
  without this horrible crucifixion, might bless you. I will not yet
  believe you will turn a deaf ear to this appeal of your wife, who, as
  you know, has had, and can have, no life apart from you. I pray, with
  tears, that you will spare me from a maternity which my soul
  repudiates, and whose sufferings I cannot endure. You will not deny me
  this privilege, which, more than anything else, I ask of you.

  “‘Though much guilt is on my soul, through repeated efforts to get rid
  of the results of your passional relations with me, and save myself
  from the pain and anguish of a maternity I have felt unable to bear,
  and of giving birth to children that I do not want, yet I will not
  despair of salvation reaching me through your love. To live as pure as
  my aspirations are, and have my life the natural outgrowth of the deep
  love which I feel and must express or die, would bring us both nearer
  heaven.

  “‘I cannot consent to have the woman, _the real soul-and-spirit woman_
  in me, obliterated. I cannot believe it is my destiny to have the
  _woman_ expunged from my nature. I want to be a strong, pure woman. I
  want to be lovely to you. Yet, heretofore, the strongest
  manifestations of love to you have, usually, had little other effect
  than to arouse your animal nature, and thus have been so turned as to
  render me unlovely; for a wife must become unlovely and repulsive to
  her husband, the moment he ceases to reverence her soul, and feels
  that she is to him but the means of mere sensual gratification.

  “‘You will acknowledge that there is terrible wrong somewhere. May God
  show us a Moses to lead us out of this wilderness, this Egypt! You
  have often chided me for feeling unworthy of your love; reminding me
  how strange it was, since other and worthy men regarded me highly, and
  that I did not feel myself unworthy _their_ regard. Were there no
  abuse of our sexual nature, your tender and noble love would so
  elevate and consecrate the functions of my Womanhood, that I should no
  more be tormented with that want of self-respect, which, alone, ever
  causes me to doubt your love, and feel unworthy of it. I feel, at
  times, that love would not, could not, thus crush my Womanhood; that
  it would, by intuition, guide you in your passional relations with me,
  so as never to do a wrong or outrage to my nature, even unwittingly.
  The feeling which other men’s regard awakens in me is not brought down
  and thus prostituted to sensual gratification, but is awakened only to
  vitalize and bless soul and body. Help me and save me, by your manly
  strength, even from myself!

  “‘I appeal to you, in behalf of myself, of my husband, and my
  children. Deep and enduring consciousness of guilt and shame must rest
  on my soul, in view of the outrages I have perpetrated on myself and
  my unborn children, whom I was reduced to the necessity (as it then
  seemed to me) of killing before they were born, or of cursing with an
  existence loathed and detested even by the mother that bore them.

  “‘My husband! you will, for _my_ sake, for _your own sake_, for _our
  children’s_ sake, reflect on these things, and send me your
  reflections. You will respond to this appeal from

                                                    “‘YOUR LOVING WIFE.’


                        THE HUSBAND’S RESPONSE.

  “‘MY SUFFERING WIFE:

  “‘I have a word to say to you now, such as I never said before. Your
  letter has revealed you to me as I have never before seen you. It
  shows me to what utter misery I have brought you;—how, for my
  gratification, you have descended into the lowest hell.

  “‘You intimate that I treat other women, personally, more tenderly and
  reverently than I do you. That is true: to my shame and regret I say
  it. And yet, why should I do so? Why should I crush and desecrate you,
  while I have too much respect for other women ever to think of doing
  the same to them? There is no reason for it. You are my dearest love.
  I should treat _you_ more tenderly than any others; be more careful of
  your health, and beauty of body and soul. Of all women, the husband
  should most anxiously watch over the health of his wife, and most
  shrink from the abuse and desecration of her physical as well as
  spiritual womanhood.

  “‘But I have not been wholly blind to your deep misery. I have seen
  it, and, at times, feared that I might be the cause. I did not dare
  ask the cause. Feeling not myself that degradation and misery of which
  you speak, I did not know how much you suffered; but I should have
  known, had I not been blinded by passion, and by the false idea that
  man had a right to the indulgence of his passional nature whenever he
  wished it, and that, too, without regard to the feelings of his wife,
  or the welfare of the child that might ensue.

  “‘True, I, at times, heard your words of remonstrance and entreaty,
  but they did not touch my heart; my passion made me deaf or
  indifferent to your appeals to my manhood to spare you from a
  maternity which you could not joyfully welcome. I was lost in my own
  hell, and tormented. I was blind; but now and then, glimpses came to
  me, from your own keen anguish, of the real truth. But the blur of
  selfish, craving passion, would come over my sight, and I would go on
  my old way, cheating myself always, and sometimes you, into the
  feeling that it was all right; that man had a right to that
  indulgence, whatever might be the conditions of the wife, and whatever
  her feelings in regard to Maternity. At least, I persuaded myself and
  you _that I could not help it_, and that my health would suffer unless
  I frequently held that relation with you.

  “‘Now that blind dominion of passion is at an end. Your appeal to my
  manhood has reached its deepest depths. The gratification of animal
  passion shall no more guide me in my relations to you. That it ever
  has is my shame, as well as your degradation. I wish you could see my
  soul as it now is; you would see a revolution in it. The deep wail of
  your spirit has reached my heart, and I am ready to go up with you out
  of the perdition into which my uncontrolled sensualism has cast us.

  “‘You have descended into hell, for my gratification. You have
  consented to terrible anguish of body and soul, for no higher object
  than my momentary pleasure. You have sacrificed your body and soul,
  your self-respect, your unborn children, on the altar of my
  ungovernable passion. From this hour, I will seek to repair the wrong
  I have done you. I have forced on you, in contempt of your entreaties,
  a maternity which could not be otherwise than most hateful to you. I
  have compelled you to pass through sufferings of body and anguish of
  mind which you were not ready to meet, and which were all the more
  severe, because they were imposed by one whom you loved, and who
  should have known better. I have imparted to you the elements of a new
  life, when your very soul spurned and loathed them. I have filled your
  heart with deadly hatred towards the young life, my own child, that
  was being developed beneath it. I have compelled you to a deed of all
  others the most loathsome and hateful to a pure, refined and noble
  woman,—to the _murder_ (it should have no other name) of your
  children, to the murder of _my_ children, ere they were born, to save
  them from the more fearful and horrible doom of an unwelcome and hated
  existence.

  “‘Talk not to me of _your_ guilt, of your unworthiness to stand by my
  side, and to tread with me the path of life as a true, noble and
  loving wife. If you are guilty, what am I? If you feel degraded by the
  loss of self-respect, what ought I to feel? The fault is all my own. I
  should have known better, and had a higher appreciation of the
  passional relation. Had I consulted your wishes as to maternity, had I
  counselled with you as to when you could, with safety and exultation,
  take charge of the germ of my child, and naturally develop it into
  life, had I never imposed on you a repulsive and abhorred maternity,
  would the stain of abortion now darken your soul? Yes, I see it all:
  the deep damnation of the deed is my own, and would to God that the
  penalty might descend on me; that I could save you, my long-suffering,
  too lenient and forgiving wife, the pain and anguish!

  “‘God help me! I am very sick at heart. The bitterness of death enters
  my soul, as I reflect on the unseen and unexpressed pain of body and
  desperation and anguish of soul to which my ungoverned passion has
  brought you. Can you forgive me? Can you again restore me to your
  loving confidence? Can you ever again respect my manhood, which has
  brought upon you all this woe? I will, henceforth, comply with the
  teachings of the book you sent me, and hold my entire nature in
  abeyance to your wishes and happiness, and in all my passional
  relations with you, my object shall be your health and happiness,
  rather than my own gratification. I will be to you an ERNEST, God
  helping me.

  “‘Dearest! believe me and trust me now, for I mean what I say, and it
  shall be done. I have written it here, and this shall be my pledge;
  and if ever I urge on you a relation that will subject you to the
  liability of maternity, when you do not call for it, lay this pledge
  before me and it shall be respected.

  “‘We shall yet rejoice together on earth as we never did before. This
  world may not bring to you entire restoration to health of body, nor
  peace of mind, nor yet self-abandoned trust in your husband; but the
  effort to effect this, on my part, shall not be wanting. Believe me,
  and trust to the love, the faith and energy which your letter, and
  that experience of Ernest and Nina, have awakened in me. We will
  together seek the aid of the angel helpers, who never condemn save to
  restore and bless, and who are even now lifting up and vitalizing the
  desponding and heart-stricken.

  “‘Dear wife! look up, and trust—_trust_—TRUST! and with strong nerve,
  and in conscious pride and innocence, you shall yet stand by my side,
  and tread with me the pathway of the future, a proud, loving,
  trusting, joyous wife. Your soul shall yet shine with deeper lustre on
  my manhood, to elevate and save your conscience-stricken, but not
  despairing husband. You shall yet be, in deed and in truth, my
  Saviour, and I will be yours.

  “‘These are not idle words, but come from the heart of your loving,
  penitent, yet hopeful and confident

                                                             “‘HUSBAND.’

  “It will do your heart good to know that that husband has, thus far,
  been true to his pledge; that that wife is now blooming again in
  comparative health. Hope and triumph are shining in her face, love
  quickens the intellect, and vitalizes the whole woman. And woman is
  intuitional, to understand and appreciate a true and noble manhood.
  You will not wonder, then, that she feels nearer to him, in mind and
  spirit, than ever before, for now she understands him, and he her.
  Could they have talked over the subject of passional relations, and
  understood each other before they entered upon their marriage life, it
  had saved her years of anguish. May their history be a beacon light to
  warn others to shun the rocks and shoals that lie, unseen, in the
  inner depths of wedded life!

  “It may encourage you to know that they owe their salvation to _you_,
  though they allow that I have had a hand in it. True, it was through
  me that the experience of Ernest and Nina came to their knowledge, but
  I am quite willing that the author of ‘MARRIAGE AND PARENTAGE’ should
  bear the responsibility and have the glory of their redemption. Their
  names are sacredly private. They would meet you without feeling that
  you know them. I shall not reveal them further than I have done.

  “God speed you in your efforts to vindicate the most sacred and
  important of all human rights,—_the right of woman to say when and
  under what circumstances she shall assume the office of Maternity, and
  the right of her child to a joyous welcome into life_.

  “The crime of an enforced and abhorred maternity! Well and truly do
  you call it, ‘THE CRIME OF EARTH.’ In whatever light it is viewed,
  whether in its bearing on the mother, on the child, on the husband, on
  home, on society, or on humanity, it is, indeed, THE CRIME OF CRIMES.

  “With fervent prayers for the triumph of truth on this subject, I am

                                                    Your friend,
                                                                    ——.”

My friend, how many wives would thus appeal to their husbands, if they
dared? “Sever the last link of the bond that binds her to her husband!”
Mere sensualism “the last link” in such a union! I do not like to talk
of _chains_, _links_, and _bonds_, in connection with such a relation.
Talk of these in connection with slaveholders and slaves, but let them
not sully a relation like this. “_The last link_,” indeed! Yet it is
true; it is, often, the first, and last, and only link in the chain that
binds the husband to the wife, in what is called marriage. Man seeks
woman as a legal wife, that he may legally and respectably give
indulgence, without restraint, to his passion. If the wife seeks to
preserve her soul and body from desecration, he threatens to leave her,
and seek his gratification where he can find it. She submits, to keep
him with her; both of them, unmindful and regardless of the results to
the mother and the child. “Perish all outward bonds” of marriage at
once, rather than that the relation should continue in this way!

Wives! be frank and true to your husbands, on the subject of maternity,
and the relation that leads to it. Interchange thoughts and feelings
with them, as to what nature allows or demands, in regard to these. Can
maternity be natural, when it is undesigned by the father, or undesired
by the mother? Can a maternity be natural, healthful, ennobling to the
mother, to the child, to the father, and to home, when no loving,
tender, anxious forethought presides over the relation in which it
originated?—when the mother’s nature loathed and repelled it, and the
father’s only thought was his own selfish gratification; the feelings
and conditions of the mother, and the health, character and destiny of
the child that may result being ignored by him? Wives! let there be a
perfect and loving understanding between you and your husbands, on these
matters, and great will be your reward.

Maidens! a word to you. Never enter into the physical relations of
marriage with a man, until you have conversed with him freely and fully
on maternity, and the relation that leads to it. Learn distinctly his
views and feelings, and his expectations, in regard to that purest and
most ennobling of all the functions of your nature, and the most sacred
of all the intimacies of conjugal life. Your self-respect, your beauty,
your glory, your heaven, as a wife, will be more directly involved in
his feelings and views and practices, in regard to that relation, than
in all other things. As you would not become a weak, a miserable,
imbecile, unlovable and degraded wife and mother, in the very prime of
your life, come to a perfect understanding with your chosen one, ere you
commit your person to his keeping in the sacred intimacies of home.
Beware of that man, who, under pretence of delicacy, modesty, and
propriety, shuns conversation with you on this relation, and on the
hallowed function of maternity. Concealment and mystery, in him, towards
you, on all other subjects pertaining to conjugal union, might be
overlooked; but if he conceals his views here, rest assured it bodes no
good to your purity and happiness as a wife and a mother. You can have
no more certain assurance that you are to be victimized, your soul and
body offered up, _slain_, on the altar of his sensualism, than his
unwillingness to converse with you on subjects so vital to your
happiness. In the relation he seeks with you will he, _practically_,
hold his manhood in abeyance to the calls of your nature and to your
conditions, and consecrate its passions and its powers to the elevation
and happiness of his wife and children? If not, your maiden soul had
better return to God unadorned with the diadem of conjugal and maternal
love, than that you should become the wife of such a man and the mother
of his children.

How much of woman’s suffering and degradation, under the horrors of an
unnatural maternity, are owing to herself, I will not say. My appeal is
to husbands, and I would show them the extent of their responsibility in
this crime. Doubtless, woman might save herself much anguish and
suffering, if she would approach man frankly, in womanly love,
tenderness, and dignity, and open to him the depths of her soul in
regard to Maternity, and the relation in which it originates. Men are
not all below the brutes, in their nature. If woman were true to
_purity_, to justice, to her own nature, and would be just and true to
her husband and her children, and freely and lovingly converse with man
on these relations and functions, he would, often, with manly pride and
affection, respond to her. On no subject would a true and noble man
respond to the words of a pure and trusting woman with more manly pride
and dignity, and a more conscious self-respect, than on Maternity, and
the relation that leads to it. Let wives, then, be true to themselves,
if they would have their husbands true to them!

                                                                H. C. W.




                               LETTER VI.
         WORDS FITLY SPOKEN, BY ONE WHO SPEAKS WITH AUTHORITY.


 DEAR FRIEND:

Would you secure for yourself, your wife and your children, a pure and
happy home? Of one thing, then, you must never lose sight. You now
regard your wife as fitted to be your companion, intellectually and
socially, as well as affectionally. Be sure that no effort is wanting,
on your part, to keep her so. If her intellect becomes stunted, and she
be deprived of the means and opportunities for improvement, while you
enjoy every opportunity to cultivate and enlarge your intellectual
powers, how can she possibly feel herself fitted to be your equal
companion?

Let me ask you carefully to read over the “Appeal of the Wife to the
Husband,” in the last letter. Mark well what she says on this subject;
how she feels, as she finds herself losing all power to sympathize in
the intellectual aspirations and pursuits of her husband. She,
intellectually, was sinking, while he was rising; was growing poorer,
while he was growing richer; and he took little pains to impart to her
his increasing intellectual wealth. All opportunities for intellectual
growth were precluded by the anxieties of maternity, which he, without a
thought for her intellectual welfare, was constantly imposing upon her.
Never impose this function upon your wife, at the expense of her
intellectual growth. No wife can ever be made intellectually poorer by
maternity, and the cares of a mother, when that relation is joyfully
welcomed, and those cares are shared by the husband. But how can a
wife’s intellect ever be expanded with new and noble thoughts, when the
physical sufferings and mental anguish of a frequent and an undesired
maternity are ever present?

Stay at home with the mother of your children, except when necessary
avocations call you away. Share with her the cares, the anxieties and
joys, of the nursery. There cultivate your intellectual powers together
by reading, and by conversation,—especially, on all subjects pertaining
to parentage and the ante-natal, as well as the post-natal, development,
education and life of your children. How anxious will every true and
loving husband and father be, to unite with his wife and the mother of
his children, in the nursery, to impart and to receive all possible
light in regard to these matters!

Neither should you ever impose maternity on your wife at the expense of
her _social_ nature. Never go abroad to enjoy and develop your own
social nature, and leave her at home alone in the nursery, preparing to
give birth and a worthy reception to your child, or to spend her weary
hours in solitude, in anxious watchings over your children, and in
longings for your presence and your sympathy. Stay with her, and share
with her all the joys and all the sorrows, all the sweet rest and all
the weary labors, of a maternity imposed by you, and of developing into
noble men or women the offspring of your mutual love.

But how crushed, intellectually and socially, must that wife become, on
whom an ignorant, a thoughtless, or a brutal husband, is ever imposing a
maternity from which her soul recoils! Her intellect becomes dwarfed and
her social nature dead. How can it be otherwise, especially when driven
to the deed of ante-natal murder, to escape the horror of giving birth
to children accursed by the mother that bore them? Hope becomes extinct,
and the light of her soul goes out in utter darkness!

The following letter must speak for itself. It is nearly a _verbatim_
extract from a letter, the original of which is now before me. No man,
especially no husband, can read it, and not feel quickened in all that
is truly manly, noble and God-like. Of this woman, as to her style and
her sentiments, every true man will feel that to be true which the
people said of the teachings of Jesus—“HE SPEAKS AS ONE HAVING
AUTHORITY.” May her words of power find a response in the heart of every
husband and wife, and of every man and woman!

  “The subject of an undesigned and undesired maternity,—how it affects
  the mother towards the child, towards the function of Maternity
  itself,—these are matters, on which, as a wife and a mother, and a
  friend of Human Progress, my mind has been deeply exercised since they
  were first presented to me. The delicate and hallowed beauty with
  which you invest maternity, and the relation that leads to it, renders
  it easy for me to impart to you my views on these subjects, while I
  feel instinctively repelled from any approach to them with most other
  persons, both men and women.

  “The thoughts I have do not flow from my own experience. I have never
  given birth to a child not earnestly desired. Yet, being a woman and a
  mother, it seems to me no difficult matter to judge correctly as to
  what must necessarily be the emotions and effects produced by such a
  maternity.

  “But I must express my earnest conviction, that any woman, any wife,
  who permits herself to be made the instrument of bringing into life a
  new existence, unwelcome to her own soul, must, in some degree, be
  wanting in that self-respect which is an inseparable accompaniment of,
  nay, an essential element in, true nobility of character. That woman
  must feel degraded before her own soul, who, for any cause, in or out
  of _legal_ marriage, suffers herself to be made the means of such an
  outrage upon her innocent and helpless babe. Better, a thousand times,
  that she leave her legal husband at once and forever, than allow soul
  and body to be thus prostituted, and herself to be made accessory to a
  deed so unnatural and unjust as that of giving birth to a child whose
  existence is repudiated and loathed by her own heart.

  “Public opinion, based on his superior physical strength and
  (hitherto) superior intellectual development, has accorded to man the
  dignity of lordship. Looking over the face of the earth, he says, ‘See
  all things for my use, even woman.’ And as the Bible, in many of its
  teachings, as these are explained, sanctions this arrogance, declaring
  that the ‘man was not made for the woman, but the woman for the man,’
  she herself, the just authority of Nature being educated out of her,
  and the arbitrary authority of man educated into her, believes it her
  duty to yield implicit obedience to all the demands of the man to whom
  she has declared allegiance at the altar;—the _altar_, truly; for
  there she is frequently offered a propitiation to satisfy the demands
  of man’s unholy passion; and from henceforth this being, created with
  reason, conscience and intuitions of her own, and for her own
  guidance, believes it her highest duty to sacrifice all these to the
  authority and the licensed sensualism of the husband, for whose
  pleasure she was created, and to ‘obey even as Sarah obeyed Abraham,
  calling him Lord.’

  “This much may be said to account for the fact that so many women,
  otherwise excellent and amiable, lend themselves to the commission of
  this great crime; a crime against themselves, against their children,
  against their husbands, against our great humanity. And while thus
  prostituting their persons according to law (made for this very end,
  and solely by those who prostitute them), they deceive themselves into
  the stupid belief that they are leading pure and virtuous lives, and
  look with scorn and contempt upon the poor sister who commits the same
  unnatural and revolting deed in an unlawful and less reputable manner.

  “Human decrees and enactments can never alter or reverse human
  obligations. What is wrong without a license or commission from human
  government, is wrong with such a license. If an undesigned and
  undesired maternity be a dark and damning sin against the child, the
  mother, and humanity, against God, without the sanction of the Church,
  the State, and public opinion, it is a sin of an equally dark and
  damning character with such sanction. In every case where the act that
  leads to maternity would be a sin, a foul and monstrous crime, and the
  shame and infamy of one or both parents, without the sanction of human
  laws, it would be the same with such sanction, and in a legalized
  union. Those women, therefore, who for any cause, allow an undesired
  maternity to be imposed on them by men holding the legal relation of
  husbands, and permit themselves to be made the means of giving
  existence to children whom they do not want, in legal marriage, ought
  to be, and one day will be, regarded in the same light as those are
  who become mothers outside of wedlock. If it be wrong for a woman to
  become a mother, without the consent of Church and State and society,
  it is wrong for her to become a mother with such consent. If right
  with such consent, it is right without it. Whatever it is right to do
  with a civil, ecclesiastical or social license, it is right to do
  without it.

  “If woman’s life be made a curse by the constant endurance of
  suffering, consequent upon a too-frequent maternity, the religious
  woman often endeavors to stifle the outcries and accusations of reason
  and intuition by the absurd plea that she ‘must have all the children
  whom it is God’s will to send.’ Occasionally, one is found weak
  enough, and wickedly fond enough, to say, as Miss Bremer, with
  contemptible silliness, makes one of her amiable characters in ‘The
  Home’ say, ‘that though she had such a large and rapidly increasing
  family, and her husband’s means of providing for it were somewhat
  limited, yet he _never grumbled_, and was always ready to welcome each
  new child as it came!’ Grumble, indeed! A husband ‘grumbling’ that his
  wife has conceived! A father ‘grumbling’ at the birth of a child!
  ‘Always ready to welcome each new child as it came!’—and this said by
  a wife of her husband, as the strongest testimony to his manliness and
  justice as a husband and father, and as the highest reason why she
  should love and honor him! What man so base, so ignoble, so fallen,
  and so deserving a dungeon or the gallows, as he who imparts the germ
  of a new life to his wife, to gratify his passion, and then ‘grumbles’
  because a child is born, and thrusts it from him? Man can give no
  greater proof of the utter degradation and ruin of his moral nature.
  Yet not to grumble at a maternity of his own imposing, and not to
  repel and cast off the babe for whose undesired existence he is
  responsible, is Miss Bremer’s highest conception of manhood!

  “But a false religious education is not the only reason why woman
  weakly and unrighteously yields herself to the base and brutal passion
  of her husband; for a passion, though all pure and ennobling when its
  demands are just and naturally answered, becomes most base and
  brutalizing to men and women, when indulged at the expense of the
  child, and contrary to the wishes of the wife and mother. As society
  is now constituted, she is his dependant. The laws make her
  subservient to his will, while she continues a wife, and all-pervading
  custom has, in great measure, deprived her of the dignity which an
  independent ability to engage in business for herself, outside the
  domestic circle, would confer.

  “‘_Can do_ is easily carried about,’ is a pithy old Scottish proverb;
  and this same ‘Can do’ is a good and sturdy staff of self-support,
  when a woman finds that the man on whom she fondly leaned would become
  to her, not a tower of strength and a refuge from the storm, but the
  oppressor to crush both soul and body, and make of her very Womanhood
  an unworthy thing. Let woman respect herself. She will gain nothing by
  submitting to wrong and outrage. No wife ever gained or perpetuated
  the love and respect of a husband, deserving the name, by yielding to
  his passion, merely to please him.

  “It is the popular, but foolish and unthinking belief, that children
  owe great obligations to their parents for bringing them into life;
  but is not the contrary the fact, that parents are under the strongest
  possible obligations to their children to render that being good,
  wise, and happy, which they themselves have forced upon their child?
  Assuming this as self-evident, then is it clear that such existence
  should not be the result of blind, unthinking passion, but of careful,
  wise and loving design.

  “The act in which the child originates is performed, often, solely for
  the momentary gratification of one or both parents. No thought for the
  welfare, the physical, mental and spiritual organization and
  tendencies of the child that may ensue, is entertained. No careful and
  anxious forethought for the character and destiny of the child is
  exercised, but the gratification of mere animal passion is the sole
  object sought. The child comes into being undesigned by the father and
  undesired by the mother,—the offspring of reckless, selfish, sensual
  lust, and not of tender, self-forgetting, noble love. How grievous the
  wrong done by the father to the mother, and by the mother to herself,
  and by both to the child who is thus thrust into the world by
  violence! What hope can exist for such a child? The felon’s doom was
  written on his soul before he was born. His parents consigned him to
  the dungeon or the gallows ere he drew the breath of life.

  “The woman who, in youth, is flattered and caressed for the charms of
  her person, the sweetness of her temper, and the goodness of her
  heart, when married to a man who thus regards her as but the
  instrument of his pleasure, soon loses the charms for which she was
  caressed, and, while the husband is in his prime, she enters upon a
  premature old age; her physical strength exhausted by the almost
  constant suffering and agony attendant upon giving existence to those
  poor, unwelcome ones,—her beauty faded, her temper soured, her whole
  soul embittered by a consciousness of her hard lot, and her mental
  nature stunted in its growth,—for what leisure has she to attend to
  the wants of her own spirit, while her energies are taxed to the
  utmost with the care of her living children, who are solely dependent
  on her, and she preparing to add another to the number? How can she
  fill the treasure-house of her own soul with ‘things new and old,’
  under all these adverse circumstances, and while the present physical
  wants of her little ones are constantly clamoring, ‘Give! give!’ Does
  not reason, does not justice, demand for woman that she have full
  opportunity for the development of her own Womanhood, soul, body, and
  spirit? Has not she, as an individual child of God and member of the
  human family, a _right_ to this? Does not the well-being of such
  children as she may righteously bring into existence loudly call for a
  full and _practical_ recognition, on the part of every husband and
  every man, of her right to decide for herself when, how often, and
  under what circumstances, she shall assume the office of Maternity, or
  be subjected to the relation that may issue in maternity? Does not the
  happiness, the best interest of the husband, require it? Does not
  Humanity itself demand it?

  “And how must that woman, in whose soul the theory of passive
  obedience has not wholly eradicated nature, regard the husband who
  causes her thus to curse ‘the day wherein she was born’ a woman? In
  her inmost soul, she must look upon him as the half-enlightened slave
  looks upon his master, and bitterly reproach him for victimizing her
  to his own base passion, and for his own short-lived gratification,
  irrespective of the woful consequences to her whom he has sworn to
  cherish, honor and protect. And justly does she thus regard him. No
  wife can love and honor such a husband. He is to her what the
  executioner is to the victim, or the slaveholder to his crushed and
  outraged slaves. She cannot but loathe him.

  “Can love do any injury to its object? Must not the wife become
  alienated from the husband, who, instead of cherishing her health and
  beauty, and seeking her happiness, subjects her to the loss of all
  these, and instead of honoring, basely enslaves her to his own
  infamous passion?—who, instead of protecting from evil, exposes her to
  sickness, sorrow and death, not in accordance with her own free will,
  her own glad choice, in pursuit of an object worthy and great enough
  to inspire hope, courage and strength to meet the coming suffering,
  and the attainment of which shall amply compensate, and cause her ‘to
  remember no more the anguish, for joy’ that a new life is given unto
  her, but simply and solely that his own mean, selfish, animal nature
  may find present satisfaction? Deserves such a man the blessings of a
  home of love and harmony, the devotion of wife and little ones? Alas!
  no; he has planted only curses, and ‘whatsoever a man soweth, that
  shall he also reap.’

  “Must not such a wife, too, regard the creative function in both
  herself and husband with loathing and abhorrence? And did not the
  power of refusing this unwelcome maternity reside within herself, who
  could blame her for reproaching even the great Creator for so endowing
  her with a capacity for unremunerative suffering? And what must be the
  atmosphere of that house (I will not dignify it by the sacred name of
  _home_), where the wife and mother regards her own nature as
  degraded,—her husband the tyrant who degrades, and her children the
  fruits of this degradation? Is that house a fit nursery for the germs
  of a noble Humanity? Do not plants there take root which cumber the
  earth, and, in their turn, fill it anew with those briers and thorns
  of human kind, which render its habitations places of cursing and
  bitterness?

  “Alas for the poor child of such a parentage! Receiving his very being
  by a base act of the father, nourished until birth underneath the
  heart of the mother, whose whole nature protests against its
  existence, feeding upon her bitterness, hatred, and sense of
  humiliation, the gall and wormwood of her soul infused into its young
  being, coming at last into the world destitute of the inheritance of
  love,—the inheritance justly his own,—where shall be the resting-place
  of that child’s soul? Around what can it lovingly cling? Even its own
  mother regards it as an unwelcome intruder; in whose loving bosom
  shall it be tenderly nurtured?

  “Perhaps the mother who bore him used her best endeavor to cut short
  his earthly existence ere he saw the light; and, failing in this, when
  ushered into the world, grudges him the care and sustenance necessary
  to sustain that existence. Or if, as is more frequently the fact, with
  the actual presence of the helpless innocent in her bosom, somewhat of
  the mother’s heart awakens into life, it is not that rich, overflowing
  life of love which pours the wealth and fulness of her own being into
  his. She cares for him as the animal cares for its young in its utter
  helplessness; and then the weary woman, with many other children about
  her, and preparing for a new maternity, thrusts him from her as soon
  as possible, and the little yearling must ‘tak the stirk’s sta’ (the
  stall of the yearling calf). What can the poor, unwelcome child
  become? How small are his chances for a virtuous life! If he thinks
  God has so created him, well may he plead with poor Burns—

                    ‘Thou knowest thou hast formed me
                    With passions wild and strong.’

  ‘Can a bitter fountain send forth sweet water?’ ‘Where shall I get
  them?’ was the reply of a criminal to Jonathan Edwards, who told him
  he must have better thoughts.

  “Alas for poor Humanity! ‘Let there be light,’ that man may know that
  the relation that leads to maternity can only be ennobled when its
  object is the creation of a new and glorious life; that his passional
  nature can only derive dignity and beauty from the control of love and
  reason; that otherwise, it is of the earth, earthy, and debases him
  below the level of the brute. ‘Let there be light,’ that woman, in
  whose soul resides the power, may say to this overwhelming flood of
  evil, ‘Here shall thy proud waves be stayed!’ The errors of a false
  religious education, bad laws, and bad customs, have, hitherto, formed
  some extenuation for this weak subserviency; but this ignorance has
  been tolerated full long, and now the great cry of God and Humanity
  goes forth calling for repentance,—that ‘a new heavens and a new earth
  may be created, wherein shall dwell righteousness.’”

Man has a heart, and that heart can be reached by the loving and earnest
appeal of a true woman. Words, such as those contained in the above
extract, will never be uttered in vain. They are the true oracles of
Nature’s God, as revealed in the soul of the wife and the mother. Let
the father hearken to the mother as she pleads, in behalf of her
children, that they may not be cursed with an unwelcome existence. Let
the husband listen to the prayer of his wife, that she may be spared a
maternity whose responsibilities she is not prepared joyfully to assume.
Humanity utters her indignant protest against man, when, to gratify his
sensual passion, he perpetrates the greatest possible outrage against
woman, as a wife and mother, and as a woman, by subjecting her to the
necessity of cursing her child with an abhorred existence, or of killing
it before it is born. Protestations of love and devotion must ever seem
insulting and disgusting to a true woman, from a man who would thus
recklessly inflict upon herself and her child this foul wrong. In vain
does such a man prate of his regard for the purity and honor of woman,
of his reverence for marriage and parentage, and of his desire for the
elevation of our common humanity; his life, in the sacred privacy of
home, is an insult to his wife, an outrage upon the mother of his
children, an act of living injustice and cruelty to his offspring, and a
crime of deepest infamy against all that is true, pure and noble in
human nature.

Man will not always be thus heedless of the health and happiness of his
wife; he will not always be thus unjust and inhuman to his innocent and
unconscious children, by making them objects of dread, of loathing and
cursing, to the very heart under whose pulsations they receive their
ante-natal development. He will subject his manhood to the health and
happiness of his wife and children; and in doing so, will receive the
richest reward earth can bestow,—the perfect trust of a devoted wife,
and the loving respect of a healthy, happy and joyous offspring.

                                                                H. C. W.




                              LETTER VII.
    THE DREAD ALTERNATIVE—ANTE-NATAL MURDER, OR AN UNWELCOME CHILD.


 DEAR FRIEND:

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

                                                Your friend,
                                                                H. C. W.

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                          TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES


 1. Silently corrected obvious typographical errors and variations in
      spelling.
 2. Retained archaic, non-standard, and uncertain spellings as printed.
 3. Enclosed italics font in _underscores_.