V.—The Frequency of Forced Abortions, even among the Married.
V.—The Frequency of Forced Abortions, even among the Married.
All are familiar with the fact, to be perceived everywhere upon the most casual scrutiny, that the standard size of families is not on the average what used to be seen; in other words, that instances of an excess over three or four children are not nearly as common as we know was the case a generation or two back. No one supposes that men or women have, as a whole, so deteriorated in procreative ability as this might otherwise seem to imply.
There can be but one solution to the problem, either that pregnancies are very generally prevented, or that, occurring, they are prematurely cut short. We have seen that countless confessions prove that this surmise is true.
In the treatise to which we have already alluded, its author has shown by a series of unanswerable deductions, based on material gathered from many sources both at home and abroad, that forced abortions in America are of very frequent occurrence, and that this frequency is rapidly increasing, not in the cities alone, but in the country districts, where there is less excuse on the ground of excessive expenditures, the claims of fashionable life, or an overcrowding of the population. It was proved, for instance, that in one State that was named, one of the wealthiest in the Union, the natural increase of the population, or the excess of the births over the deaths, has of late years been wholly by those of recent foreign origin. This was the state of things existing in 1850; three years later it was evident that the births in that commonwealth, with the usual increase, had resulted in favor of foreign parents in an increased ratio. In other words, it is found that, in so far as depends upon the American and native element, and in the absence of the existing immigration from abroad, the population of our older States, even allowing for the loss by emigration, is stationary or decreasing.
The strange and otherwise unaccountable phenomenon to which we are now referring, appears to have been first elucidated in a memoir, upon the decrease of the rate of increase of population now obtaining in Europe and America, read by the same author in 1858 to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, as a contribution to the science of political economy. That paper, with all its mass of evidence, that as yet there seems to have been no attempt to controvert, we find embodied in the treatise to which I have referred, and which will prove of absorbing interest to even the casual reader.
Thus it is seen that abortion is a crime not merely against the life of the child and the health of its mother, and against good morals, but that it strikes a blow at the very foundation of society itself.
One of the strange and unexpected results at which the author we have so often referred to has arrived, but which he has both proved to a demonstration and satisfactorily explained, is that abortions are infinitely more frequent among Protestant women than among Catholic; a fact, however, that becomes less unaccountable in view of the known size, comparatively so great, of the families of the latter—in the Irish, for instance—the point being that the different frequency of the abortions depends not upon a difference in social position or in fecundity, but in the religion. We should supposeà priorithat the Protestant, especially if of New England and Puritan stock, would be much the safer against all such assaults of the world, the flesh, and the devil. The following is the concise and convincing solution of the paradox that has been given:—
"It is not, of course, intended to imply that Protestantism, as such, in any way encourages, or, indeed, permits the practice of inducing abortion; its tenets are uncompromisingly hostile to all crime. So great, however, is the popular ignorance regarding this offence, that an abstract morality is here comparatively powerless; and there can be no doubt that the Romish ordinance, flanked on the one hand by the confessional, and by denouncement and excommunication on the other, has saved to the world thousands of infant lives."[14]
There is another surprising result that must strike every candid observer whose position gives him extended and frequent observation of women, and of late years the study and treatment of their special diseases has become so recognized that there are many physicians thus rendered competent to judge; it is this, but a second one of the many very frightful characteristics of induced abortion, that the act is proportionately much more common in the married than in the unmarried basing the calculation upon an equal number of pregnancies in each case.
This fact also may be easily accounted for. Abortion is undoubtedly more common in the earlier than in the later months of pregnancy, because the sensible signs of fœtal vitality are then less permanently present, and the conscience is then better able to persuade itself that the child may possibly be without life, or the alarm wholly a false one. It is less common with first than with subsequent children, though instances of its occurrence with the former are certainly not rare. A woman who has never been pregnant does not, as a general rule, conceive as readily as one who has already been impregnated before, perhaps partly from the fact that intercourse, under certain circumstances, is more likely to be excessive in such cases, at times producing acute or subacute inflammation of the cervix uteri, and consequent sterility, as is so constantly observed in prostitutes, very many of whom, upon ceasing their trade, after accumulating a little property, as in France, or upon being sent to out-lying colonies, as in England, and becoming married, at once fall pregnant.
The unmarried woman, ifenceinte, has not the opportunity of lying by for a few days' sickness, without exciting suspicion, that the married can easily seize for themselves. She is often not so conversant with the early symptoms of gestation, and is more prone to wait until its existence has been rendered certain by the sensation of quickening, in the hope, doubtless, not unfrequently, that this certainty may persuade her paramour to marriage, instead of deciding him against it, as is so often the case. It may be allowed, I think, that infanticide, the murder of a child after its birth, or its exposure to the vicissitudes and perils of chance, is more common among the unmarried, but that destruction of the fœtus in utero, the rather prevails where the rites of law and religion would seem to have extended to that fœtus every possible safeguard.
In the latest of the papers upon the subject of abortion, to which we have already alluded, there is furnished additional evidence as to the frequency of induced miscarriage.
"The infrequency of abortions," it is said, "as compared with labors at the full period, is disproved by the experience of every physician in special or large general practice, who will faithfully investigate the subject. The truth of this statement has been fully verified, in the instance of abortion criminally induced, by many of my professional friends who were at first inclined to doubt the accuracy of my inferences on that point; with reference to abortions more naturally occurring, the evidence is of course more easily arrived at, and is in consequence proportionately more striking. In many cases of sterility it will be found that the number of abortions in a single patient have been almost innumerable; and, it may be added, in a large proportion of the cases of uterine disease occurring in the married, inquiry as to their past history will reveal abortions, unsuspected perhaps even by the family physician, as the cause. It is not so much the general practitioner, the hospital attendant, or the accoucheur, as such, who can testify as to the true frequency of abortion; for many cases, even of the most deplorably fatal results, do not seek for medical assistance at the time of the accident. The real balance sheet of these cases is to be made out by the hands which are more especially called to the treatment of chronic uterine disease."[15]
But not only is abortion of excessively frequent occurrence; the nefarious practice is yearly extending, as does every vice that custom and habit have rendered familiar. It is foolish to trust that a change for the better may be spontaneously effected. "Longer silence and waiting by the profession would be criminal. If these wretched women, these married, lawful mothers, ay, and these Christian husbands, are thus murdering their children by thousands through ignorance, they must be taught the truth; but if, as there is reason to believe is too often the case, they have been influenced to do so by fashion, extravagance of living, or lust, no language of condemnation can be too strong."[16]