No part of our subject is more delicate than this. Very few people are willing to listen to a dispa.s.sionate discussion of the propriety or impropriety of limiting within certain bounds the number of children in a family. On the one side are many worthy physicians and pious clergymen, who, without listening to any arguments, condemn every effort to avoid large families; on the other, are numberless wives and husbands, who turn a deaf ear to the warnings of doctors and the thunders of divines, and, eager to escape a responsibility they have a.s.sumed, hesitate not to resort to the most dangerous and immoral means to accomplish this end.
We ask both parties to lay aside prejudice and prepossession, and examine with us this most important social question in all its bearings.
Let us first inquire whether there is such a thing as _over-production_--having _too many_ children. Unquestionably there is.
Its disastrous effects on both mother and children are known to every intelligent physician. Two-thirds of all cases of womb disease, says Dr.
Tilt, are traceable to child-bearing in feeble women. Hardly a day pa.s.ses that a physician in large practice does not see instances of debility and disease resulting from over-much child-bearing. Even the lower animals ill.u.s.trate this. Every farmer is aware of the necessity of limiting the offspring of his mares and cows. How much more severe are the injuries inflicted on the delicate organization of woman! A very great mortality, says Dr. Duncan of Edinburgh, attends upon confinements when they become too frequent.
The evils of a too rapid succession of pregnancies are likewise conspicuous in the children. There is no more frequent cause, says Dr.
Hillier,--whose authority in such matters none will dispute,--of rickets than this. Puny, sickly, short-lived offspring follows over-production.
Worse than this, the carefully compiled statistics of Scotland show that such children are peculiarly liable to idiocy. Adding to an already excessive number, they come to over-burden a mother already overwhelmed with progeny. They cannot receive at her hands the attention they require. Weakly herself, she brings forth weakly infants. "Thus,"
concludes Dr. Duncan, "are the acc.u.mulated evils of an excessive family manifest."
Apart from these considerations, there are certain social relations which have been thought by some to advise small families. When either parent suffers from a disease which is transmissible, and wishes to avoid inflicting misery on an unborn generation, it has been urged that they should avoid children. Such diseases not unfrequently manifest themselves after marriage, which is answer enough to the objection that if they did not wish children they should not marry. There are also women to whom pregnancy is a nine months" torture, and others to whom it is nearly certain to prove fatal. Such a condition cannot be discovered before marriage, and therefore cannot be provided against by a single life. Can such women be asked to immolate themselves?
It is strange, says that distinguished writer, John Stuart Mill, that intemperance in drink, or in any other appet.i.te, should be condemned so readily, but that incontinence in this respect should always meet not only with indulgence but praise. "Little improvement" he adds, "can be expected in morality until the producing too large families is regarded with the same feeling as drunkenness, or any other physical excess." A well-known medical writer, Dr. Drysdale, in commenting on these words, adds: "In this error, if error it be, I also humbly share."
"When dangerous prejudices," says Sismondi, the learned historian of southern Europe, "have not become accredited, when our true duties towards those to whom we give life are not obscured in the name of a sacred authority, no married man will have more children than he can bring up properly."
Such is the language of physicians and statesmen; but a stronger appeal has been made for the sake of morality itself. The detestable crime of _abortion_ is appallingly rife in our day; it is abroad in our land to an extent which would have shocked the dissolute women of pagan Rome.
Testimony from all quarters, especially from New England, has acc.u.mulated within the past few years to sap our faith in the morality and religion of American women. This wholesale, fashionable murder, how are we to stop it? Hundreds of vile men and women in our large cities subsist by this slaughter of the innocents, and flaunt their ill-gotten gains--the price of blood--in our public thoroughfares. Their advertis.e.m.e.nts are seen in the newspapers; their soul and body destroying means are hawked in every town. With such temptation strewn in her path, what will the woman threatened with an excessive family do? Will she not yield to evil, and sear her conscience with the repet.i.tion of her wickedness? Alas! daily experience in the heart of a great city discloses to us only too frequently the fatal ease of such a course.
In view of the injuries of excessive child-bearing on the one hand, and of this prevalent crime on the other, a man of genius and sympathy, Dr.
Raciborski of Paris, took the position that the avoidance of offspring to a certain extent is not only legitimate, but should be recommended as a measure of public good. "We know how bitterly we shall be attacked,"
he says, "for promulgating this doctrine; but if our ideas only render to society the services we expect of them, we shall have effaced from the list of crimes the one most atrocious without exception, that of child-murder, before or after birth, and we shall have poured a little happiness into the bosoms of despairing families, where poverty is allied to the knowledge that offspring can be born only to prost.i.tution or mendicity. The realization of such hopes will console us under the attacks upon our doctrines."
It has been eagerly repeated by some, that the wish to limit offspring arises most frequently from an inordinate desire of indulgence. We reply to such, that they do not know the human heart, and that they do it discredit. More frequently the wish springs from a love of children. The parents seek to avoid having more than they can properly nourish and educate. They do not wish to leave their sons and daughters in want.
"This," says a writer in _The Nation_ (of New York), in an article on this interesting subject,--"this is not the n.o.blest motive of action, of course, but there is something finely human about it."
"Very much indeed is it to be wished," says Dr. Edward Reich, after reviewing the mult.i.tudinous evils which result to individuals and society from a too rapid increase in families, "that the function of reproduction be placed under the dominion of the will."
Men are very ready to find an excuse for self-indulgence; and if they cannot get one anywhere else, they seek it in religion. They tell the woman it is her duty to bear all the children she can. They refer her to the st.u.r.dy, strong-limbed women of early times, to the peasant women of northern Europe, who emigrate to America, and ask and expect their wives to rival them in fecundity. Such do not reflect that they have been brought up to light indoor employment, that their organization is more nervous and frail, that they absolutely have not the stamina required for many confinements.
Moreover, they presume too much in asking her to bear them. "If a woman has a right to decide on any question," said a genial physician in the Ma.s.sachusetts Medical Society a few years since, "it certainly is as to how many children she shall bear." "Certainly," say the editors of a prominent medical journal, "wives have a right to demand of their husbands at least the same consideration which a breeder extends to his stock." "Whenever it becomes unwise that the family should be increased," says Sismondi again, "_justice_ and _humanity_ require that the husband should impose on himself the same restraint which is submitted to by the unmarried."
An eminent writer on medical statistics, Dr. Henry MacCormac, says: "The brute yields to the generative impulse when it is experienced. He is troubled by no compunction about the matter. Now, a man ought not to act like a brute. He has reason to guide and control his appet.i.tes. Too many, however, forget, and act like brutes instead of as men. It would, in effect, prove very greatly conducive to man"s interests were the generative impulses placed absolutely under the sway of right reason, chast.i.ty, forecast, and justice."
There is no lack of authorities, medical and non-medical, on this point.
Few who weigh them well will deny that there is such a thing as too large a family; that there does come a time when a mother can rightfully demand rest from her labours, in the interest of herself, her children, and society. When is this time? Here again the impossibility meets us of stating a definite number of children, and saying, "This many and no more." As in every other department of medicine, averages are of no avail in guiding individuals. There are women who require no limitation whatever. They can bear healthy children with rapidity, and suffer no ill results. There are others--and they are the majority--who should use temperance in this as in every other function; and there are a few who should bear no children at all. It is absurd for physicians or theologians to insist that it is either the physical or moral duty of the female to have as many children as she possibly can have. It is time that such an injurious prejudice was discarded, and the truth recognised, that while marriage looks to offspring as its natural sequence, there should be inculcated such a thing as marital continence, and that excess here as elsewhere is repugnant to morality, and is visited by the laws of physiology with certain and severe punishment on parent and child.
Continence, self-control, a willingness to deny himself,--that is what is required from the husband. But a thousand voices reach us from suffering women in all parts of our land that this will not suffice; that men refuse thus to restrain themselves; that it leads to a loss of domestic happiness and to illegal amours, or that it is injurious physically and mentally,--that, in short, such advice is useless, because impracticable.
To such sufferers we reply that Nature herself has provided to some extent against over-production, and that it is well to avail ourselves of her provisions. It is well known that women when nursing rarely become pregnant, and for this reason, if for no other, women should nurse their own children, and continue the period until the child is at least a year old. Be it remembered, however, that nursing, continued too long, weakens both mother and child, and, moreover, ceases to accomplish the end for which we now recommend it.
Another provision of nature is, that for a certain period between her monthly illnesses every woman is sterile. The vesicle which matures in her ovaries, and is discharged from them by menstruation, remains some days in the womb before it is pa.s.sed forth and lost. How long its stay is we do not definitely know, and probably it differs in individuals.
From ten to twelve days at most are supposed to elapse after the _cessation_ of the flow before the final ejection of the vesicle. For some days after this the female is incapable of reproduction. But for some days _before_ her monthly illness she is liable to conception, as for that length of time the male element can survive. This period, therefore, becomes a variable and an undetermined one, and even when known, its observation demands a large amount of self-control.
There is one method widely in use in this country for the limitation of offspring which deserves only the most unqualified condemnation, which is certain to bring upon the perpetrators swift and terrible retribution, and which is opposed to every sentiment of nature and morality. We mean
THE CRIME OF ABORTION.
_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 new-born 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. Its blood is upon her head, and as sure 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.
This crime is common; it is fearfully prevalent. Hundreds of persons are devoted to its perpetration. It is their trade. In nearly every village its ministers stretch out their b.l.o.o.d.y hands to lead the weak woman to suffering, remorse, and death. Those who submit to their treatment are not generally unmarried women who have lost their virtue, but the mothers of families, respectable _Christian_ matrons, members of churches, and walking in the better cla.s.ses of society.
We appeal to all such with earnest and with threatening words. If they have no feeling for the fruit of their womb, if maternal sentiment is so callous 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, to bear a child every year for twenty years than to resort to such a wicked and injurious step; better to die, if needs be, in the pangs of childbirth, than to live with such a weight of sin on the conscience.
There is no need of either. By the moderation we have mentioned, it is in the power of any woman to avoid the evils of an excessive family, without injury and without criminality.
We feel obliged to speak in plain language of this hidden sin, because so many are ignorant that it is a sin. Only within a few years have those who take in charge the public morals spoken of it in such terms that this excuse of ignorance is no longer admissible.
Bishop c.o.xe, of New York, in a pastoral letter, the late Archbishop Spaulding, Catholic Primate of the United States, in an address at the close of a recent Provincial Council at Baltimore, the Old and New School Presbyterian Churches, at a meeting in Philadelphia, have all p.r.o.nounced the severest judgments against those guilty of antenatal infanticide. Appeals through the press have been made by physicians of high standing, and by eminent divines, which should be in the hands of every one.
The chiefest difficulty hitherto has been, that while women were warned against the evils of abortion, they were offered no escape from the exhaustion and dangers of excessive child-bearing. This difficulty we have fully recognised and fairly met, and, we believe, in such a manner that neither the accuracy of our statements nor the purity of our motives can be doubted. Should our position be attacked, however, the medical man must know that in opposing our views, he opposes those of the most distinguished physicians in Europe and in America; and the theologian should be warned that, when a neglect of physical laws leads to moral evil, the only way to correct this evil is to remedy the neglect. In this case the neglect is over-production; the evil is abortion.
NATURE OF CONCEPTION.
The theories which have been advanced to explain the manner in which the human species is continued and reproduced are very numerous. Including the hypotheses of the ancient philosophers, some two hundred and fifty have been promulgated by the greatest thinkers of all times. The older ones do not deserve mention, as they are replete with absurdities. Such, for instance, is that of Pythagoras, which supposed that a vapor descended from the brain and formed the embryo. The Scythians therefore took blood from the veins behind the ears to produce impotence and sterility. Modern science has shown the total error of this and many other views formerly entertained on this subject. Has galvanism or electricity any share in the mysterious function? Some among the modern physiologists have supposed that there is an electrical or magnetic influence which effects generation. Even within a few months, Dr. Harvey L. Byrd, Professor of Obstetrics in the Medical Department of Washington University of Baltimore, has a.s.serted that he has "every reason for believing that fecundation or impregnation is always an electrical phenomenon; ... it results from the completion of an electric circle,--the union of positive and negative electricities." This, however, is not accepted by all as the dictum of modern science.
Physiology has clearly established that the new being is the result of contact between the male element, an independent, living animal, on the one part, and the female element, a matured egg, on the other, involving the union of the contents of two peculiar cells. Without such contact, fecundation cannot take place.
The only matter of practical moment in connection with this most interesting function which we have to announce, is the influence of the mind on the offspring at the time of generation. This influence has long been remarked in regard to animals as well as men. Jacob was aware of it when he made his shrewd bargain with Laban for "all the speckled and spotted cattle" as his hire. For we are told that then "Jacob took him rods of green poplar, and of the hazel and chestnut tree, and pilled white strakes in them, and made the white appear which was in the rods.
And he set the rods which he had pilled before the flocks in the gutters in the watering-troughs, when the flocks came to drink, that they should conceive when they came to drink. And the flocks conceived before the rods, and brought forth cattle ringstraked, speckled, and spotted. And Jacob did separate the lambs, and set the faces of the flocks towards the ringstraked and all the brown in the flock of Laban; and he put his own flocks by themselves, and put them not unto Laban"s cattle. And it came to pa.s.s, whenever the stronger cattle did conceive, that Jacob laid the rods before the eyes of the cattle in the gutters, that they might conceive among the rods. But when the cattle were feeble, he put them not in: so the feebler were Laban"s, and the stronger Jacob"s."
The impressions conveyed to the brain through the sense of sight are here a.s.serted by the writer of Genesis to have influenced the system of the ewes so that they brought forth young marked in the same manner as the rods placed before their eyes. It is not said that there was any miraculous interposition; but the whole account is given as if it were an everyday, natural, and well-known occurrence.
The Greeks, a people renowned for their physical beauty, seemed to be aware of the value of mental impressions; for in their apartments they were lavish of statues and paintings representing the G.o.ds and G.o.ddesses, delineated in accordance with the best models of art.
Dionysus, tyrant of Syracuse, caused the portrait of the beautiful Jason to be suspended before the nuptial bed, in order to obtain a handsome child.
The following is related of the celebrated Galen:--A Roman magistrate, little, ugly, and hunch-backed, had by his wife a child exactly resembling the statue of aesop. Frightened at the sight of this little monster, and fearful of becoming the father of a posterity so deformed, he went to consult Galen, the most distinguished physician of his time, who counseled him to place three statues of love around the conjugal bed, one at the foot, the others, one on each side, in order that the eyes of his young spouse might be constantly feasted on these charming figures. The magistrate followed strictly the advice of the physician, and it is recorded that his wife bore him a child surpa.s.sing in beauty all his hopes.
The fact that the attributes of the child are determined to an important extent by the bodily and mental condition of the parents at the time of conception, explains the marked difference almost constantly observed between children born to the same parents, however strong the family likeness may be among them. The changes constantly going on in the physical, intellectual, and emotional states of the parents, produce a corresponding alteration in offspring conceived at successive intervals.
Twins generally resemble each other very closely in every respect.
Inasmuch, therefore, as the moment of generation is of much more importance than is commonly believed in its effect upon the moral and physical life of the future being, it is to be wished that parents would pay some attention to this subject. It is the moment of creation,--that in which the first vital power is communicated to the new creature. Not without reason has nature a.s.sociated with it the highest sensual exaltation of our existence. Dr. Hufeland, the author of _The Art of Prolonging Life_, has said, "In my opinion it is of the utmost importance that this moment should be confined to a period when the sensation of collected powers, ardent pa.s.sion, and a mind cheerful and free from care, invite to it on both sides."
SIGNS OF FRUITFUL CONJUNCTION.
There are some women in whom the act of conception is attended with certain sympathetic affections, such as faintness, vertigo, etc., by which they know that it has taken place.
Swelling of the neck was regarded in ancient times as a sign of conception. Its truthfulness has been reaffirmed by modern authorities.
It has also been a.s.serted that impregnation generally excites a universal tremor in all parts of the body, and that it is a.s.sociated with more than an ordinary degree of pleasure.
It must not be supposed, however, that enjoyment and impregnation bear necessarily to each other the relation of cause and effect, although this is the popular opinion. From too implicit a reliance upon this current belief, wives are often incredulous as to their true condition.
It is a fact that in some cases sickness at the stomach manifests itself almost simultaneously with the act of fecundation. Authentic instances are on record of wives reckoning their confinement nine months from the first feeling of nausea, without ever making a mistake.