Horatio Robinson Storer

“ At this eventful period, when the fountains of youth dry up, and the scanty circulation is turned from its accustomed channel, the woman ceases from the periodical discharges, which in health and with care are the secret of her beauty, her attractions, her charms. ”

“ 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." ”

“ It is true, however, that while physicians are unanimous as to the sanctity of fœtal life, they have yet to a certain extent innocently and unintentionally given grounds for the prevalent ignorance upon this subject, to which I shall soon allude. The fact that in some cases of difficult labor it becomes imperatively necessary to remove the child piecemeal, if dead, or, if living, to destroy it for the sake of saving the mother's life, ought not to imply that the physician has attached a trifling value to the child itself. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The truth is, that our silence has rendered all of us accessory to the crime, and now that the time has come to strip down the veil, and apply the searching caustic or knife to this foul sore in the body politic, the physician needs courage as well as his patient, and may well overflow with regretful sympathy. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Is there then no alternative but for women, when married and prone to conception, to occasionally bear children? This, as we have seen, is the end for which they are physiologically constituted and for which they are destined by nature. In it lies their most efficient safeguard for length of days and immunity from disease. Intentionally to prevent the occurrence of pregnancy, otherwise than by total abstinence from coition, intentionally to bring it, when begun, to a premature close, are alike disastrous to a woman's mental, moral, and physical well-being. ”

“ All the fruitfulness of the present generation, tasked to its utmost, can hardly fill the gaps in our population that have of late been made by disease and the sword, while the great territories of the far West, just opening to civilization, and the fertile savannas of the South, now disinthralled and first made habitable by freemen, offer homes for countless millions yet unborn. ”

“ On the contrary, it will be shown that miscarriages are often a thousand fold more dangerous in their immediate consequences, and, therefore, more decidedly requiring medical treatment, than the average of natural labors; that they are not only frequently much more hazardous to life at the time, but to subsequent health, their results in some instances remaining latent for many years, at times not showing themselves until the so-called turn of life, and then giving rise to uncontrollable and fatal hemorrhage, or to the development of cancer, or other incurable disease. ”

“ For ourselves, we have no fear that the truth, in reference to the crime of procuring abortion, would do aught but good. It would [Pg 84] appear that sheer ignorance, in many honest people, is the spring of the horrible intra-uterine murder which exists among us; why not, then, enlighten this ignorance? It would be far more effectually done by some bold and manly appeal than by the scattered influence of honorable practitioners alone. Will not the mischief, by and by, be all the more deadly for delaying exposure and attempting relief? ”

“ Were woman intended as a mere plaything, or for the gratification of her own or her husband's desires, there would have been need for her of neither uterus nor ovaries, nor would the prevention of their being used for their clearly legitimate purpose have been attended by such tremendous penalties as is in reality the case.
We have seen that in a perverted and mistaken public opinion lies the secret of the whole matter. "Ladies boast to each other of the impunity with which they have aborted, as they do of their expenditures, of their dress, of their success in society. ”

“ Richard Bertrand is not one of those natures actuated by violent passions, not such a one as Victor Hugo would make the hero of a novel, but a young man always ready to respond to the call of duty—patient and earnest, loving and true, unselfish and enduring, in his position as elder brother in a family, who could look to him alone for earthly support, displaying all the characteristics of a healthful and well-proportioned Christian life. ”

“ Abortion is undoubtedly more common in the earlier than in the later months of pregnancy, because the sensible signs of fœtal vitality are then less permanently present, and the conscience is then better able to persuade itself that the child may possibly be without life, or the alarm wholly a false one. It is less common with first than with subsequent children, though instances of its occurrence with the former are certainly not rare. ”

“ Is not, then, forced abortion a crime? Moreover, instances have occurred where, the membranes having been accidentally ruptured, the child has breathed, and even cried, though yet unborn, as proved alike by the sounds within the mother, well authenticated by bystanders, and by auscultation of her abdomen, and by the fact that sometimes, when not born living, the lungs of the fœtus have been found fully expanded, a process which can be effected only by respiration, and of which the proofs are such as can be occasioned in no other way whatever. ”

“ Let us then, physicians and the community, meet each other half way—ready to acknowledge, upon due evidence, the frightful extent of the evil that exists in our homes—an evil, in part occasioned by ignorance and carelessness, and that we are both, in a measure, accountable for, and should be ready to assist each other in its cure. I propose to show that induced abortions are not only a crime against life, the child being always alive, or practically supposed to be so ”

“ Were well-arranged foundling hospitals provided in all our large cities, they would prove a most efficient means of preventing the sacrifice of hundreds of the children of shame, and, so far from encouraging immorality, they would afford one of its surest preventives, for by keeping a woman from the crime of infanticide or the equally guilty intentional miscarriage, they would save her from one element of the self-condemnation and hatred which so often hurry the victim of seduction downward to the life of the brothel. ”

“ That the standard, in this respect, of the profession of the present day has not deteriorated, is proved by the first of the resolutions adopted by the Convention at Louisville, in 1859: "That while physicians have long been united in condemning the procuring of abortion, at every period of gestation, except as necessary for preserving the life of either mother or child, it has become the duty of this Association, in view of the prevalence and increasing frequency of the crime, publicly to enter an earnest and solemn protest against such unwarrantable destruction of human life. ”

“ It is in reality the physician's province, indeed, it is his sacred duty, to prevent disease as well as to cure it, and this, even though it must plainly lessen the business and the emoluments that would otherwise fall into his hands. Would women listen to the appeal now to be made them, an immense deal of ill-health would be prevented, and thousands of maternal as well as fœtal lives would annually be saved. ”

“ And, moreover, in the fact that the profession thus transcends, almost for the first time, upon any matter in this country, the barrier which for mutual protection, both of science and the community, has always been allowed to stand, and directly addresses itself to the judgment and to the hearts of women upon a question vital to themselves and to the nation, there is afforded most conclusive evidence that the subject is of the highest importance, that the step now taken is a necessary one, and the motives that prompt it sincere. ”

“ Compared with the mother, who is already mature and playing so important a part in the world, he justly allows the balance to fall, but he fully recognizes that he is assuming a tremendous responsibility, that his action is only justified by the excuse of dire necessity, and he suffers, if he is a man of any sensibility and feeling, an amount of mental anguish not easily to be described, and that none of us, who have been compelled to so terrible a duty, need feel ashamed to confess. ”

“ Abortion or miscarriage is known by every woman to consist of the premature expulsion of the product of conception. It is not as well known, however, if the statements of patients are to be relied upon, that this product of conception is in reality endowed with vitality from the moment of conception itself. It is important, therefore, to decide in what the moment of conception consists. It has now been ascertained that every variety of animal life originates from an egg, even primarily those lowest forms in which occur the phenomena of so-called alternate generation ”

“ During pregnancy all the vital energies of the mother are devoted to a single end: the protection and nourishment of the child. Such wise provision is made for its security, such intimate vascular connection is established between the fœtal circulation and the blood-vessels of the mother, that its premature rupture is usually attended by profuse hemorrhage, often fatal, often persistent to a greater or less degree for many months after the act has been completed, and always attended with more or less shock to the maternal system, even though the full effect of this is not noticed for years. ”

“ How much better to provide for its innocent victims, its irresponsible offspring, than, as now, to permit the so frequent destruction of both. It is foolish to assert that by such provision we but pander to sin. In many of these instances the woman is innocent of intentional wrong, being led astray by her perfect confidence in the constancy and good faith of a lover, and in others she is, doubtless, ignorant of the true character of the act she is committing. ”

“ The wretch whose account with the Almighty is heaviest with guilt, too often becomes a heroine. So truly is this the case, that the woman who dares at the present day, publicly or privately, to acknowledge it the holiest duty of her sex to bring forth living children, 'that first, highest, and in earlier times almost universal lot,' [21] is worthy, and should receive, the highest admiration and praise. ”

“ We have also seen that not only is abortion wrong, no matter from what quarter we contemplate the act, but so also is the deliberate prevention of pregnancy in the married alike detrimental to the health and to the moral sense. Moderation and temperance here, as elsewhere, afford the golden rule. Under the circumstances to which I allude, total abstinence may, as far as the health is concerned, be as injurious as is the other extreme of excessive indulgence. To the woman in good bodily condition, occasional child-bearing is an important means of healthful self-preservation ”

“ This is a matter of such importance to the welfare of the community, that long ago the law should have provided for its various dangers, and should wisely have left it to no man's discretion or purity of character to withstand the tremendous temptations which must be allowed to here exist. The law now provides, in one or more at least of our States, that the certificate of a single physician, no matter what his skill or standing, cannot commit a patient to the often necessary and beneficial seclusion of a lunatic asylum ”

“ Woman's mind is prone to depression, and, indeed, to temporary actual derangement, under the stimulus of uterine excitation, and this alike at the time of puberty and the final cessation of the menses, at the monthly period and at conception, during pregnancy, at labor, and during lactation; a matter that also seems to have been more thoroughly investigated by the authority I have so freely drawn from in reference to the question of abortion, than by any other writer in this country. ”