Dr. W. A. Chandler, a physician of over thirty years' practice, has been quoted as saying that he believed that more than one-half of the human race died before birth, and that three-fourths of these were abortions by intent.
Edward Cox, M.D., President of the Michigan State Medical Society, says:
"A combination of circumstances has produced a depraved and debauched public sentiment that not only winks at but condones, palliates, and defends the crime. It goes further in many instances; it recognizes the abortionist as a useful member of society, and even extols him as a benefactor. It will take line upon line and precept upon precept, facts, figures, and eloquence, to overcome this false and pernicious sentiment. Yet it must be overcome before we can make the least progress in the much needed reformation".
Some abortionist is fouad in every town and village, and the crime is not limited to any section or country. No one for an instant supposes that the procreative ability of mankind has very materially lessened within the past generation; yet it needs no very careful scrutiny to observe that the standard size of our families has fallen from what the average used to be in recent generations. An American family nowadays too often consists of a husband and wife, with perhaps a child or two not often more than three or four children. Such are the recent statistics, and the cause cannot be referred to a lessened fecundity of the men and women.
The reason can, however, not infrequently be found in one of three causes:
(a) either one or both of the married parties have been rendered sterile, usually from a gonorrhoea which was thought to be cured;
(b) or criminal abortion is performed;
(c) or expedients are Transactions of the Michigan Medical Society, Lansing, 1870, adopted for the prevention of conception.
In passing we may say that even this latter procedure is a curse to the good health and the morals of both parties, and that there is no harmless way in which to prevent conception. A home without the prattle of children is the most dreary, lonely and melancholy of households, only too frequently disordered by estrangements and jealousies and inconstancies. To be "barren", or "sterile", without "issue", is the greatest of griefs in a normal marriage relationship.
As many as twenty years ago Dr. Nathan Allan, of Massachusetts, pointed out "that the native American stock of that State seemed to be dying out". Whereas one hundred years ago it was common to see families with from six to ten children, he said that at the time of which he spoke it was rare to find a family of three children, and not unusual to find only one child or none at all. And, further, the same authority showed that in those towns in which the American families predominated the rate of birth was less than the death rate, and that the increase of population was left to those of recent foreign origin.
Our large families are more apt to be found among Eoman Catholics and those who have recently emigrated to this country.
In fairness to the Eoman Church it must be said to its glory that its women rarely resort to this crime, the priests giving the soundest of teaching to their parishioners on these vital points, as follows:
"That the destruction of the embryo at any period from the first instant of conception is a crime equal in guilt to that of murder; that to admit its practice is to open the way for the most unbridled licentiousness, and to take away the responsibility of maternity is to destroy one of the strongest bulwarks of female virtue".