The unwelcome child

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.