VII.—Alternatives, Public and Private, and Measures of Relief.
VII.—Alternatives, Public and Private, and Measures of Relief.
It may be asked if there is no latitude to be allowed for extreme cases of the character already described. We are compelled to answer, None. If each woman were allowed to judge for herself in this matter, her decision upon the abstract question would be too sure to be warped by personal considerations, and those of the moment. Woman's mind is prone to depression, and, indeed, to temporary actual derangement, under the stimulus of uterine excitation, and this alike at the time of puberty and the final cessation of the menses, at the monthly period and at conception, during pregnancy, at labor, and during lactation; a matter that also seems to have been more thoroughly investigated by the authority I have so freely drawn from in reference to the question of abortion, than by any other writer in this country.[19]During the state of gestation the woman is therefore liable to thoughts, convictions even, that at other times she would turn from in disgust or dismay; and in this fact, that must be as familiar to herself as it is to the physician, we find her most valid excuse for the crime.
Is there then no alternative but for women, when married and prone to conception, to occasionally bear children? This, as we have seen, is the end for which they are physiologically constituted and for which they are destined by nature. In it lies their most efficient safeguard for length of days and immunity from disease. Intentionally to prevent the occurrence of pregnancy, otherwise than by total abstinence from coition, intentionally to bring it, when begun, to a premature close, are alike disastrous to a woman's mental, moral, and physical well-being.
There are various alternatives to these so degrading habits of the community. To some of them equal objections apply. But, in reality, there is little difference between the immorality by which a man forsakes his home for an occasional visit to a house of prostitution, that he may preserve his wife from the chance of pregnancy, and the immorality by which that wife brings herself wilfully to destroy the living fruit of her womb. Allowing for the weakness and frailty of human nature, the first were surely the preferable of the twain. But we need not compare these odious customs, each so common and each so wrong. With greater frugality of living, and greater self-denial, and self-control in more trivial matters, there need be no interference, at least no intentional interference, on the part of either husband or wife with the first great law of human weal and human happiness, in accordance with which, by the divine institution of home and its mutual joys, the due propagation and natural increase of the species was intended to be insured.
Were well-arranged foundling hospitals provided in all our large cities, they would prove a most efficient means of preventing the sacrifice of hundreds of the children of shame, and, so far from encouraging immorality, they would afford one of its surest preventives, for by keeping a woman from the crime of infanticide or the equally guilty intentional miscarriage, they would save her from one element of the self-condemnation and hatred which so often hurry the victim of seduction downward to the life of the brothel. A certain amount of illicit intercourse between the sexes will always take place, no matter how condemned by law, until the public standard of morals shall be so elevated as to render the practice unknown. This is a fact that is self-evident, and cannot be frowned out of existence. How much better to provide for its innocent victims, its irresponsible offspring, than, as now, to permit the so frequent destruction of both. It is foolish to assert that by such provision we but pander to sin. In many of these instances the woman is innocent of intentional wrong, being led astray by her perfect confidence in the constancy and good faith of a lover, and in others she is, doubtless, ignorant of the true character of the act she is committing. Should she be driven by what is comparatively a venial, and not so unnatural an offence, to one of the deadliest crimes?
But for the married, who have not this strong stimulus of necessity, and the excuse of having been led astray or deceived, there need be no public channel provided, through which to purchase safety for their children. Is it not, indeed, inconceivable that the very women, who, when their darlings of a month old, or a year, are snatched from them by disease, find the parting attended with so acute a pang, can so deliberately provide for, and congratulate themselves and each other, upon a wilful abortion! Here, words fail us.
"Of the mother, by consent or by her own hand, imbrued with her infant's blood; of the equally guilty father, who counsels or allows the crime; of the wretches, who by their wholesale murders, far out-Herod Burke and Hare; of the public sentiment which palliates, pardons, and would even praise this, so common, violation of all law, human and divine, of all instinct, all reason, all pity, all mercy, all love, we leave those to speak who can."[20]