To elaborate such a fine piece of machinery as the Homo sapiens requires time and parental attention, and a lengthened delay by its mother's side. It is precisely this mutual interdependence between mother and child, and the child's helplessness and tardy development, which are the cause of the maternal sympathy and tenderness and watchfulness. The mother runs no less eagerly to the child when it is hurt than the child goes to her; they are in a relationship of perfect trust and perfect love.
If, as Henry Drummond has so beautifully pointed out in "The Ascent of Man," the infant has been the "tutor for the affections" of its mother, it also has transformed man from a 3avage into a loving father, who, with the mother, concentrates his affections on the object which belongs to both, and in loving the one he loves the other with a new love. While among Carnivora the males sometimes eat up the young, so that the mothers frequently have to hide them away, it is nevertheless the rule with the Mammalia that the male shall protect and defend his family. Thus, Herr von Koppenfells states' that the male gorilla "spends the night crouching at the foot of the tree, against which he places his back, and thus protects the female and their young, which are in the nest above, from the nocturnal attacks of leopards".
And Savage says of the gorillas that "when the male is first seen he gives a terrific yell that resounds far and wide through the forest.
. . . The females and young at the first cry quickly disappear; he then approaches the enemy in great fury, pouring out his horrid cries in quick succession." This is the function of a father that of a protector and a food getter.
After the consummation of the marriage by sexual intercourse, and after the birth of the infant, there is normally, even among gorillas and chimpanzees and orang-outangs and savages, a sense of permanent relationship to the mother, and a conjugal tie which binds them together. It is a sacred thing indeed to be a mother, for the tie that binds the child to her forever remains more intimate and lasting than the affection for the father. It was the little child which first taught primitive man the qualities of love and tenderness and sympathy; and it is the yearning for offspring which normally compels love and marriage between the males and females of all animals.
Sexual intercourse is not intended for so trifling a purpose as that of giving a pleasurable sensation, and the mating of the two sexes finds its highest manifestation in this act of love. Sexual pleasure is merely an incident in the union of the sexes, which draws them together in order to ensure a result birth which is attended with pain and anxieties and prolonged responsibilities.
The highest function of a true man is to protect her whom he loves, and to make the greatest sacrifices for her and for their offspring. During the months and years while the mother is devoting her whole mind and heart to the rearing of his child, he is to infuse into that family circle a fragrance of manliness.
It is man who plays the active, woman the passive part in courtship; and after his approach to the female his manhood must pledge him, by the power of a natural law, to provide for the subsequent protection and guardianship both of the woman and the offspring. This is a higher law of honor than any made by the decrees of fashion or so called respectability.
Nature struggled up from the first primordial mass of protoplasm, through the plants, and through the lower forms of animal life; up through the invertebrata and the vertebrata, some types persisting merely as fossils, others modified from their ancestors. Ages have been spent in the evolution of the Mammalia, and the culmination of this indefinitely prolonged extension of time has been the masterpiece Man, or rather the Mother. Nature has made nothing superior, and Man is but the crown of Woman's glory.
Criminal abortion is thus seen to be the most abhorrent crime against Nature which could be conceived of, and the man who permits the mother and her offspring to struggle through the long and bitter years in illegitimacy, without honoring that family relationship in the natural capacity of a father, refusing to provide food and shelter, and crav enly withholding his protection, is the product of a corrupt civilization so much below the gorillas and the sparrows that we can only classify him as a Monster.
No mother who understands her position at the summit of Creation, or who has any of the natural instinct of love, can connive at the destruction of her babe, unless she be deranged, without abdicating her lofty and holy position of sovereignty in Nature; and if the dumb brutes could speak they would plead with her to ignore public sentiment at any cost, and to listen to the voice of instinct, of pity, and oi love.
Criminal abortion is the most villainous crime against the infant, the mother, the family circle, society and Nature. Except therapeutically, the destruction of this human life is absolutely indefensible. It is attended with extreme danger to the mother's health of mind and body, to her happiness, and to her life. It is no trifling factor in the awful waste of human life, and is possible only in a community which tolerates one standard of purity for men and another for women. It is wholly irreligious and immoral, and is but the natural outcome of men's demand for illegitimate sexual gratification.