: The unwelcome child by Wright Henry Clarke - Sexual ethics; Abortion

@FreeBooksFri 01 Sep, 2023

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PREFACE, 5

INTRODUCTORY LETTER: A Husband to Henry C. Wright--Inquiries respecting the Laws of Nature designed to govern Parentage, 9

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.

The life of every good man and the life of every bad man, the life of a teetotaller and the life of a drunkard, a life of love and a life of hatred, a life of forgiveness and a life of revenge, a life of truth, justice, and purity, and a life of falsehood, injustice, and impurity, the life of Jesus and the life of Napoleon,--who can determine to what extent all these have been, are, or will be, controlled by birthright tendencies, and by influences that, before they were born, bore upon those who live these lives? Certain it is that, to a great extent, the diseases, sufferings, and premature deaths, and many of the individual, social, governmental, and ecclesiastical thefts, robberies, and murders, committed in the post-natal state of our being, are but the natural, if not the necessary results of these ante-natal organic and constitutional conditions and tendencies.

To all Husbands and Wives, to all Fathers and Mothers, and to all who hope to enter into these most ennobling and most potent of all human relations, are the following pages earnestly commended, by

INTRODUCTORY LETTER. A Husband to Henry C. Wright.

BOSTON, January 10, 1857.

MY DEAR FRIEND:

I was but a boy when I first heard you utter such sentiments. I did not then understand their full import. They had not entered into the experience of my inner or outer life. Yet I took the impression, that woman would be to man just what he chose and had power to make her; and that it depended on man to say whether woman should be to him a purifying and ennobling influence, or a source of degradation and ruin.

From that time I had a desire, so far as woman is concerned, to place myself in such relations to her, that her influence on my life might be pure and ennobling. I have studied to get clear and definite views of my nature and needs as a man, and how woman can most perfectly accomplish her mission of love and salvation to me.

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