Horatio Robinson Storer

“ Let such a woman, be she ever so slight and fragile, ever so much averse to motherhood, let her but be convinced that her husband would be happier with little voices singing in his home, and let him sustain her, and pity her, and she will bear it all, even to the end, cheerfully. No complaints will be heard, and the influence of that household will be pure.
Do not accuse me of justifying abortion, or of seeking to lay blame upon innocent shoulders. Abortion is a crime, and women are guilty of it, but they sin not alone. While attention is being called to the fact, why not also to the cause? ”

“ Thus it is seen that abortion is a crime not merely against the life of the child and the health of its mother, and against good morals, but that it strikes a blow at the very foundation of society itself. ”

“ I know that many of the profession, from fear of ridicule or dislike to sanction what they do not believe in, would shrink from such a duty. Is it not, however, due to humanity in every way to prevent this frequent murder? for such, by our apathy and neglect, the mother’s death in these cases becomes. Can we, as Christians, refuse any aid? I am not ashamed to acknowledge that for myself, though no Catholic, I have performed this intra-uterine baptism, where delivery without mutilation was impossible. ”

“ The licentiousness of the brothel is clear and open in its character; nobody defends it; every one is aware of its seductions and its dangers; the young man who enters the house of shame knows that he does it at the peril of reputation, and under the dread of disease. But the other form of licentiousness is secret from its very nature. It may be practised without suspicion; there is little fear of discovery or of shame. It lurks in the school, the academy, the college, the workshop, ay, even in the nursery. No age and no profession are without examples of the dreadful ruin it can accomplish. ”

“ Would mankind, in following such advice, merely resort to greater abstinence before their means allow the expense of children, and to greater prudence after that period, no fault could be found; but when we discover criminal abortion thus justified and almost legitimated, we may well oppose to such doctrine the words of the indeed admirable Percival, “To extinguish the first spark of life is a crime of the same nature, both against our Maker and society, as to destroy an infant, a child, or a man.” ”

“ I was very slow to be convinced that any woman of decent character would consciously perpetrate an abortion; still slower to see how any woman calling herself pure minded could so degrade the sanctities of marriage as to make steady and persistent attempts to prevent impregnation,—and yet I had for many years felt sure that a great many so-called ‘female diseases’ were incited and developed by the luxurious and indolent habits of our women, which permit them, when neither cultivated nor philanthropic, to become conscious of every phase of gestative action or sexual excitement. ”

“ Hodge, "can rectify public opinion; they alone can present the subject in such a manner that legislators can exercise their powers aright in the preparation of suitable laws; that moralists and theologians can be furnished with facts to enforce the truth upon the moral sense of the community, so that not only may the crime of infanticide be abolished, but criminal abortion properly reprehended; and that women in every rank and condition of life may be made sensible of the value of the fœtus, and of the high responsibility which rests upon its parents." ”

“ Suffering through the centuries, and the varying phases of social civilization, she has been consecutively man’s slave, his idol for the moment, his toy. If recognized at all as in equality of rights, it has been in the right to suffer, and lest by nature she should not possess enough of this, woes unnecessary, unmentionable, innumerable, have been heaped upon her. Every one knows this, whether man or woman, and if woman’s voice has till now been nearly silent, she will none the less value these words of grateful appreciation, of sympathy, and of appeal to my fellows. ”

“ We have seen that, in some instances, the thought of the crime, coming upon the mind at a time when the physical system is weak and prostrated, is sufficient to occasion death. The same tremendous idea, so laden with the consciousness of guilt against God, humanity, and even mere natural instinct, is undoubtedly able, where not affecting life, to produce insanity. This it may do either by its first and sudden occurrence to the mind, or, subsequently, by those long and unavailing regrets, that remorse, if conscience exist, is sure to bring. ”

“ It having now been shown, directly and by temporary assumption, that [10] the law and public sentiment, both by its theory and its practice, alike deny to unjustifiable abortion the imputation of crime, it remains for us to discuss this question abstractly, and to prove not merely that they are wrong, but that the offence is one of the deepest guilt, a crime second to none.
Ignorance of the law is held no excuse. The plea of ignorance of guilt could hardly better avail where its existence is implied by common sense, by analogy, and by all natural instinct, binding even on brutes. ”

“ Again, all of us learn the lessons of life by experience—sad experience, indeed, it too often is. Many a man would give even his own soul could his past life be restored to him, and its follies, its sins be effaced. Too often his soul is no longer his own to give: inextricably entangled in passion’s web, wound about and about with its myriad threads, there remains but the dead and worthless semblance of himself, that can be restored by nought save the boundless grace of God. Who would not gladly escape such risk, and welcome every premonition of danger? ”

“ Many women never quicken at all, though their children are born living; others quicken earlier or later than the usual standard of time; or, others again may, in their own persons, have noticed either or all of these peculiarities in different pregnancies. Quickening is in fact but a sensation, the perception of the first throes of life—but of a twofold occurrence, and this not merely the motion of the child, but often the sudden emergence of the womb upwards from its confinement in the low regions of the pelvis into the freer space of the abdomen. ”

“ We are compelled, from the preceding considerations, to acknowledge not merely that criminal abortion is of alarming frequency among us, but that its frequency is rapidly increasing; this having been made apparent by each link in the chain of evidence that has been presented. Every effort that might possibly check this flood of guilt will, if delayed, have so much the more to accomplish. The crime is fast becoming, if it has not already become, an established custom, less honored in the breach than in the observance. ”

“ How much more requisite is it that in the question we are now considering, to one mode of deciding which the physician may be prompted by pity, by personal sympathy, the entreaties of a favorite patient, and not seldom by the direct offer of comparatively enormous pecuniary compensation, the law should offer him its protecting shield, saving him even from himself, and helping him to see that the fee for an unnecessarily induced or allowed abortion is in reality the price of blood. As a class, it cannot be gainsaid that physicians of standing will spurn with indignation the direct bribe ”