Year: 1868

mentions "the unnatural and wicked practice
OF procured abortion" and proceeds as toll
lows:


The effect OF this practice, so frightfully
prevalent at the present day, upon the moral
and physical health OF the female portion of
the community, is far more destructive than
is generally supposed, and it is gratifying to
know that the subject is beginning to receive
the serious consideration of the wise ard good
among us. Alludinss to this subject as a
cause of insanity and a crime most reprehen-
sible, DIR. Gray, Superintendent of the State
Lunatic Asylum, Utica, n. Y, says.


81 have for many years received and treat
ed patients whose insanity was directly trace
able to this crime through Its moral and
physical effects. Some have, after recovery,
given sad chapter of perverted lie, and
disclosed the revolving fact that the sugges-
tiers, aiders and abetters OF this heinous Of
ience against God and nature-this rude vio-
lation OF the best instincts OF woman, were
persons OF their OWL sex.


"One woman told me, and the statement
was verified by her husband, that seven sue
cessful aboitions were procured on her by
one OF her female friends, and both Of these
women were highly respectable persons and
members of the church. When, in broken
health, and after the failure in the eighth at
tempt she applied to physician, he informed
her of the criminality OF the act, its dire con-
cequences to health, and advised her against
the continuance of such practice. She sub
sequently, however, obtained the services of
a charlatan who succeeded in inducing abor-
ton, and some months later this woman was
admitted to the Asylum in wretched health,
and suffering form metaach0liG which her
pastor, ignorant Of her true history, attribut-
ed to religious excitement.


cta ro. hat
his congregation in country village, one of
the prominent women approached his wife
with proposition that she should destroy her
prospective offspring, declaring that she
thought it right to do SO, and mentioned
others who resorted to the practice rather
than to be troubled with children. 1t cannot
be possible that such women are ignorant of
the crime OF intanticide. The only pl,a that
can be made for them is that they do not
comprehend the turpitude and criininality OF
the act, and do not recognize the solemnity
OF marriage and the true dignity Of maternity.
One could almost wish that such women
might nor be mothers. 1t is, no Rever, true
that criminal thoughts engender crime itself,
and where the human heart has once yielded
to carry out and conceal any iniquity, the
moral tone as well as the moral strength is
lowered, and it is afterward doubly easy to do
wrong and especially to commit again the
same sin. his is fundamental law in nature.
If then, the familiar contemplation OF crime
weakens the power of resistance, and its COM
mission dulls or obliterates the moral percep-
tions, we have the key to the mystery of the
prevalent crime. Hence, we may know and
trace the guilty steps which lead modest,
quiet, loving women gradually but surely
down, until finally all the instincts of ma
ternity are crushed out and the thought of
becoming a mother instead of bringing a
blush and a host of tender fears and hopes
and misgivings, and tears half grief, half joy,
arouses the bitter, angry defiant spirit of crime.
Maternity becomes hated thing, and what
ought to be little guest OF love, is coldly and
treacherously murdered. One cannet look at
his muther and sisters and think of all this,
and yet it is true. This demon once admitted
into household or into small or large cir
Gle OF acquaintance, is rarely expelled until
he has poisoned the spring of domestic bliss
and left his impress in moral debasement and
sad train of physical ills"


1t is stated with considerable assurance by
DR.. Nathan Allen of Lowell, in a paper on
the population of Massachusetts, which he
read at a late annual meeting OF the "Ameri-
can Social Science Association, that never
and nowhere in the history of the world was
the practice of abortion so common as in this
country at the present day, and it is his Opin-
ion that in New England alone, many thou
sand abortions are procured annually.


If this be true, it is DO marvel that the gen.
eral health OF our females is far below that OF
our grandmothers, and that the peculiar dis
eaSe-insanity, has an abundant supply oil
material upon which TO feed and grow.