That the mother-instinct exists in the hearts of infants is early seen in the desire upon the part of little girls to mother their dolls, whether they have been purchased at great cost or are made of a few old clothes rolled up into the shape of a rag-baby. Where a stranger is uncertain about the s.e.x of a child it can usually be pretty certainly determined by asking whether they prefer a doll or a horse.

It would be wrong, however, to suppose, because the little boy manifests the preference for a horse, that therefore he will never be interested in children. The pleasures and satisfactions of parenthood are as great to the father as to the mother, and while there is a difference between the mother-nature and the father-nature, yet, because of the terribly perverting influences of modern society, the desire for children is often stronger in the husband than in the wife. Where the natures of both are as G.o.d intended, sterility and barrenness would be alike a great disappointment for either. The desire for children is natural both to men and women, and in the home, as in universal nature, unfruitfulness and barrenness are a great misfortune.

About one marriage in eight or ten is usually barren of children. In the animal kingdom, and among insects especially, an abundance of food is indispensable to a rapid increase of numbers by reproduction. In the human family the question of food as it stands related to the question of reproduction is an important one. If the food is insufficient, either in quant.i.ty or quality, to maintain good physical conditions, or if it is too abundant or too rich, a tendency to sterility and barrenness is alike the result. Ill.u.s.trations are not wanting of persons who, possessing large wealth and allowing themselves great indulgence in eating, became fat and corpulent and remained childless, but when financial reverses came their corpulence departed with their wealth, and they became the parents of children.

While the question of food is very important, it is not the only cause of barrenness. Sterility may be due to excessive s.e.xuality in the marriage relation, or it may be due to such ante-nuptial indulgence of the husband as has resulted in a depleted condition of the reproductive organs. Sometimes it is due to apathy on the part of the wife, and at other times, although less frequent, it may be the result upon her part of too intense pleasure during coition.

It may also be due to abnormal conditions produced by tampering with the reproductive function. In some instances there is a lack of such physiological compatibility as is necessary to result in conception.

Instances are not wanting where barrenness has existed and the subsequent remarriage of both parties have demonstrated that neither were personally sterile, but that unitedly they were physiologically incompatible.

Barrenness is oftentimes the result of displacement of the womb or other unfavorable conditions in the female. It would be wrong, however, to suppose that the difficulty may not rest wholly with the husband. Even where a man seems in good bodily vigor and enjoys excellent health, the sperm may be devoid of those characteristics which are essential to the production of life. This condition can only be determined by a competent physician with the aid of the microscope and other means. It is also a.s.serted by reliable medical authority that miscarriage may take place so early after conception that the wife may never suspect the real condition, but imagine herself sterile.

The cause of the barrenness of not a few women is clearly traceable to the fact that because of the impure life of the husband, either before or after marriage, he contracted gonorrha, and although at the time he may have thought it a small matter, and soon regarded himself as entirely cured, this terrible disease left its trace behind it, and perhaps two or three years afterward, when he entered the marriage relation, he imparted the hidden remnants of this disease to his innocent and unsuspecting wife, and in whom, perchance, the real disease has never been recognized at all, but the inflammation which it caused extended from the v.a.g.i.n.a to the womb, and then out through the tubes to the ovaries, and the delicate organs of reproduction were so injured as to result in permanent barrenness.

The cure for barrenness is found in remedying the cause. To discover what that cause is often requires the consultation and advice of a thoroughly competent physician, and to arrive at the most reliable conclusion a physical examination of the wife or the husband, or of both, may be necessary.

Where no means have been used to prevent conception, and the young wife has remained childless for a period of three years, there is adequate ground for a reasonable fear that causes exist, either in the husband or in the wife, which are likely to result in permanent sterility, and then no time should be lost to discover and remove the cause or causes.

The earlier years of married life are usually more fruitful than the years later on. Even where marriage is contracted after twenty-five years of age, the tendency towards sterility is easily perceptible.

Marriage, either at too early or too late a period, tends to barrenness.

Upon the part of the female the years from eighteen to twenty-four are likely to be the best years for marriage and maternity. Sometimes there is barrenness for a period of years, and this is followed by a period of quite frequent childbearing.

Barrenness may frequently be remedied by the exercise of great care upon the part of both the husband and the wife in the matter of diet and proper physical exercise. Sometimes a period of separation, varying from a few weeks to several months, is necessary to effect such physical changes as are requisite to the desired result. Single beds and separate apartments are sometimes essential, not only in order to secure conception, but to protect the beginnings of life from such disturbing influences as tend to produce the abnormal ejection of the embryo from its place of retention and growth in the womb.

CHAPTER XII.

QUESTIONS CONCERNING OFFSPRING.

It is natural that parents should long for children, and it is only proper that those who are barren should seek by all judicious and proper means to secure fruitfulness. But we are sorry to say that there is a widely prevalent and unnatural desire upon the part of many wives, and sometimes of their husbands also, to evade conception. This desire oftentimes leads these unnatural parents to seek the destruction of unborn human life. If the testimony of medical authority upon this subject is to be believed, this mania for child-murder is verily the "terror that walketh in darkness and the destruction that wasteth at noonday."

It is the duty of parents to protect the lives of their children, and the mother who desires or even consents to the murder of the infant in the cradle where G.o.d has placed it preparatory to its birth is as truly a murderer as when she strangles or stabs or poisons her infant in the cradle in which she has placed it after it is born. That the law recognizes the gravity of this crime is manifest by the fact that in nearly all the States of the Union this crime is regarded as murder, and punished accordingly. In some States, if the mother is proven guilty, the penalty is death, and in nearly all the States all who partic.i.p.ate, have knowledge of, or a.s.sist, directly or indirectly, in producing such a result, are punished with imprisonment ranging from five to twenty years.

It has been supposed by some that where the beginnings of life are destroyed before the period of quickening, no crime is committed. This is a great mistake. From the moment that the spermatozoon penetrates the ovum and unites with it, life is present, and the destruction of that life is murder. The proposition is a very simple one. The only condition upon which the ovum may remain in the womb is by possessing life. As soon as it becomes dead it is rejected and cast out. If impregnated, while life continues in it, during its period of development, if nature is not interfered with, it is retained and nourished because it has life. The facts are simple enough: the germ is either dead or alive. If dead, nature casts it out; if alive, nature retains it. If nature retains it, and it is destroyed or removed by artificial means, the person or persons who produce such a result are guilty of murder.

There is no middle ground in this matter. Dr. H. S. Pomeroy, in his excellent book ent.i.tled "Ethics of Marriage," aptly says: "She who obtains a miscarriage at the earlier months of pregnancy feels comparatively virtuous because she draws the line at 'quickening.' This is moral jugglery and ethical hair-splitting; what evidence is there of soul at five months which may not be found at four? True, the unborn child of the latter age does not appear to move its legs and arms, while the other usually does. Is the spirit situated in the extremities, or is the movement of a muscle evidence of a soul? Considered from the low plane of physical life only, what reason is there for the distinction?

There has been _life_ from the first; there is no _independent life_ until birth. It is reasonable to suppose that the Creator, who has been steadily at work for four months and fifteen days on one of the most delicate and complicated pieces in his whole laboratory, and has made no mistake thus far--the work being absolutely perfect as far as carried--considers it of little or no consequence to-day, but of the utmost importance and value when it shall have been in his hands a few hours longer!"

Dr. Napheys, in "Physical Life of Woman," says: "_From the moment of conception_ a new life commences; a new individual exists; another child is added to the family. The mother who deliberately sets about to destroy this life, either by want of care, or by taking drugs, or using instruments, commits as great a crime, is just as guilty, as if she strangled her newborn infant, or as if she s.n.a.t.c.hed from her own breast her six months darling and dashed out its brains against the wall. The blood is upon her head, and as surely as there is a G.o.d and a judgment that blood will be required of her. The crime she commits is _murder_, _child-murder_--the slaughter of a speechless, helpless being, whom it is her duty, beyond all things else, to cherish and preserve."

There is no division of opinion upon this subject. The world may hold up its hands in holy horror at the crime of Herod, but his crime is being perpetrated to-day in thousands of homes by "the slaughter of the innocents" at the hands of their own mothers. Dr. Pomeroy says: "We meet in our practice women who would hesitate to harm a fly, but who admit to having destroyed a half dozen or more of their unborn children, speaking of it as they would of the drowning of superfluous kittens." How are these thoughtless mother-murderesses to confront the souls of their unborn children on the day of Judgment? What of the declaration of Scripture, "Ye know that no murderer hath eternal life abiding in him"?

While this pa.s.sage of Scripture does not say that even a murderer may not be saved, yet it does say that one who commits murder is unsaved, and that salvation is not possible to him or her until they have sincerely repented.

The results of abortion are not only future and spiritual, but they are present, and affect serious temporal and physical results. Dr. Napheys says: "If they have no feeling for the fruit of their womb, if maternal sentiment is so calloused in their b.r.e.a.s.t.s, let them know that such produced abortions are the constant cause of violent and dangerous womb diseases, and frequently of early death; that they bring on mental weakness and often insanity; that they are the most certain means to destroy domestic happiness which can be adopted. Better, far better, bear a child every year for twenty years than to resort to such a wicked and injurious step; better to die, if need be, in the pangs of childbirth than to live with such a weight of sin on the conscience."

There can be no question but that many women are rendered incurable invalids by the violence which they do to nature by interrupting its work, destroying the growing life, and causing its expulsion in an unnatural way. Dr. Pomeroy aptly says: "Go into the orchard where there are ripe apples and others but half grown; try to pluck one of the latter; you pull, but it does not come; you twist this way and that way, and finally you secure a bruised apple with a torn and mutilated stem, and you leave behind a branch which bears unmistakable evidence of a violent and unnatural act. Turn now to the apples that are fully ripe; you put out your hand to take one, and as you touch it it falls gently and willingly into your open palm. If you now examine the stem and the branch from which it came you find no marks of violence; on the contrary, both will clearly show that nature had prepared for the separation.

"The two great dangers of childbearing are hemorrhage and fever; the first is caused directly and the second often indirectly by one and the same thing--the failure of the torn blood-vessel to close properly at the time of separation between mother and child. By the time the fruit is fully ripe Nature has so well arranged for this matter that the danger is small, but at an earlier period it is very considerable."

This attempt upon the part of parents to interfere with the order of nature has not only its terrible physical results for those who seek its perpetration, but it heaps upon the helpless unborn child terrible consequences from which it is powerless to escape. The attempt to destroy life is oftentimes a double failure. In spite of their murderous efforts, children are oftentimes born to such parents under circ.u.mstances which entail the most terrible and lifelong penalties.

Children that might have been lovable in temper, companionable in disposition, healthy and happy, are born nervous, fretful and ill-tempered; and, because they were unwanted before they were born, the mother inflicts upon them a disposition which causes her ever after to wish they never had been born.

Something of what this result is will appear from a paragraph taken from an account by Helen H. Thomas, in "The Mothers' Journal," ent.i.tled "Unwanted," in which she thus narrates a visit to a friend:

"I found my friend half sick, and extremely nervous from lack of sleep, caused by her crying baby.

"But the child looked well, and the young mother a.s.sured me that it was const.i.tutionally restless and out of sorts. She also said that she had lost more sleep since his advent--five months previous--than with all her other children--there are three of them--combined.

"After I had queried and wondered as to the why of it, for a time, the mother, with tears in her eyes, looked down at the little upturned face of the one cradled in her arms, and said:

"'It is all mother's fault, darling! She felt that her hands and heart were so full she had no room for you.' And then, looking me full in the face, she added, remorsefully: He is my only unwanted child! And so the dear little innocent suffers continually for my rebellious spirit prior to his birth. He seems restless and unhappy all the time; not at all like my other babies, who found a welcome awaiting them; and I realize now the mistake I made, in rebelling as I did, during those wearisome months, which I had planned so full of things which had to be put aside; and I am being punished for it, too. But I did not dream that by so doing I should bring suffering on my unborn child, as well as on myself."

Terrible as this picture may be, there is another thought which is still more terrible. When we remember that the mental condition of the mother during the period of gestation stamps itself upon the character of the child, what must be the character of a child who is born of a murderess--one who has either desired, planned for, or possibly undertaken and failed in the effort to murder her unborn child? How many of the murderers of to-day have inherited from their own mothers the predisposition to destroy human life? There is but little doubt that if the veil could be thrown off and the influence disclosed which molded the character and shaped the destiny of many of the children who are arraigned in the courts for the awful crime of murder, who seem possessed of an otherwise unaccountable predisposition to destroy human life, the terrible revelation would be made that during the period while their body was being formed and bent was being given to their character, prior to their birth, their mother was contemplating murder, and imparted this disposition to her own offspring.

Such thoughts not only mold the character of the unborn child, but they also affect the character of the parents themselves. The crime of child-murder must haunt them, and even if they do not suffer from the lashings of conscience, the moral character suffers irreparable damage.

But few persons are aware of the grave dangers which threaten health, and even life, when an abortion is performed. They are apt to think that it occasions only temporary inconvenience, from which they may recover in a few days, but all this is a very grave mistake.

Where accidental or unintentional miscarriage occurs, it is important both for the wife and for the husband to know that quite as much care needs to be exercised, and oftentimes for even as long a period, as for convalescence after confinement. A period of strict separation between husband and wife should be observed for a period of from six weeks to three months, according to circ.u.mstances. A failure to observe these necessities often results in serious and sometimes permanent disability upon the part of the wife.

The influences which prepare and pave the way in the minds of young women for the awful crime of child-murder are not difficult to find. One writer says: "The real beginning is in early life, when young people are taught, directly or by implication, that reproduction is a matter concerning which speech is indelicate, of which it is proper, even, to feel ashamed; as they grow older, and the period of marriage draws near, they learn to look upon parenthood as a responsibility and a burden which they may properly avoid if possible."

Parents are to blame for the total absence, during the education of their daughters, of proper instruction upon this subject. In the schools for the education of young women the course of study which has been especially arranged for the intellectual training and equipment of young men has been followed without being adapted to the special necessities of intelligent young women. They are taught many things which may serve a good purpose in securing mental discipline, but which are in every other respect impracticable, and, so far as the great purposes of their life are concerned, wholly useless. All the subjects which are best calculated to fit them for their intended position of wife and mother are studiously avoided; they are kept in profound ignorance on all subjects of special physiology, and the question of maternity dare not so much as be mentioned by the professors in the cla.s.s-room. What adds to this condition is the sad fact that parents do not supplement by personal instruction this lack of teaching in the school. Hundreds of young women are married who are so stupid as never to have asked where children come from, have no idea of the marital relation and the legitimate purpose for which G.o.d inst.i.tuted the relation. When conception takes place, they do not know how to take care of themselves or prepare for the event which could be robbed of its terrors by intelligence. The birth of their first child is attended with such anguish and agony that forever after the marital relation becomes to them one of great dread, and to escape the condition which is so full of terror to them they resort to the destruction of unborn human life.

To correct this great wrong, the first and most essential step is the widespread dissemination of intelligence upon this subject. Marriage needs to be lifted into the light of a sacred and divine inst.i.tution.

The tenderest and most sacred relations of human life need to be preserved in their purity, so that pure-minded parents may speak of these relations without shame and blushing. Young women of mature years should be made familiar with the physiological conditions which attend conception and maternity, and they need to know that from the moment of conception life exists in the embryo, and that from the moment the spermatozoon enters and a.s.similates with the ovum a separate individual life is really begun, and that she is, at that very moment, the mother of this life within her as truly as when, in the later months, she feels the quickening within her, or after its birth experiences the joy of a mother who clasps her newborn infant in her arms.

But the crime of abortion does not rest wholly with the mothers. A large part of the guilt also belongs to the fathers. We may warn the wives against the terrible sin and awful physical consequences of abortion, but so long as husbands are unwilling to govern their pa.s.sions, or to regulate their marital relations in harmony with the teachings of Scripture, but insist upon unlimited self-indulgence, the evils cannot be wholly corrected. Husbands need to be taught to look at the question from the wife's standpoint. The wrong is not all upon one side.

In a meeting of women only, after an address by a physician upon these subjects, a woman rose and said substantially as follows: "After I was married two years I became the mother of a puny, sickly baby. It required incessant care and watching to keep it alive. When it was only seven months old, to my surprise, astonishment and horror, I felt quickening, and for the first time I knew I was pregnant again. I was abased, humiliated! The sense of degradation that filled my soul cannot be described. What had been done? The babe that was born and the babe that was unborn were both to be robbed of their just inheritance. In tears and shame I told my mother, but she said: 'My child, why should you grieve and go on as you do? Don't you know that your children are legitimate?' My whole being rose in rebellion. I stamped my foot and almost screamed: 'Although my husband is the father of my children, they are not legitimate. No man-made laws, no priestly rites, can make an act legitimate that deprives innocent children of their right to life and health.' And then, with sobs and moans, reaction came, and I fainted in my mother's arms. What was the sequel? Two years later both of these children, after a brief existence, were lying side by side in the city of the dead, and until my husband and I learned the great laws which G.o.d has written deep in our being, we were not able to have children that could live."

The following somewhat lengthy but impressive quotation is from "Chast.i.ty," by Doctor Dio Lewis:

"Before we married I informed my husband of my dread of having children.

I told him I was not 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 he could now indulge his pa.s.sion without loss of reputation and under legal and religious sanctions, he insisted on the surrender of my person to his will. He violated the 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 pa.s.s away on earth. I can never forget it. It sealed the doom of our union as it has done 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 dest.i.tute, having made no preparations for a home, ourselves and child. I was a stricken woman. In September following 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 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 or an undesired maternity.

"In one year I found I was to be again 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 struggle with 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 circ.u.mstances. A desire and a determination to get rid of my child entered into my heart. I consulted a lady friend, and by her persuasion and a.s.sistance killed it. Within less than a year maternity was again imposed upon me, with no better prospect of 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 until I was prepared to accept it joyfully; but my husband insisted upon his gratification, without regard to my wishes and condition.

"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 my 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 condition. I became, in a measure, reconciled to my dark fate, and was as resigned and happy as I could be under the circ.u.mstances. I had just such a child as I had every reason to expect. I could do no justice to it. How could I?