Marie Stopes

“ To ordinary men and women, however, this mystical ecstasy is unknown, and the ordinary human consciousness is far more aware of its separateness than of its oneness with the vital forces of creation. Yet the glow of half-swooning rapture in which the Mystic's whole being melts and floats in the light of the divine force is paralleled in the rapture of lovers. ”

“ It is a sacred duty of all who dare to hand on the awe-inspiring gift of life, to hand it on in a vessel as fit and perfect as they can fashion, so that the body may be the strongest and most beautiful instrument possible in the service of the soul they summon to play its part in the mystery of material being. ”

“ A man once said to me – one can endure anything for the sake of a beloved wife. But the wife is only utterly beloved when she and her married lover have not only entered paradise together, but when she fully realizes, through insight gained by her own experiences, the true nature of that of which she is depriving her husband so long as her bodily condition makes sex-unions with him impossible. ”

“ Hence I suggest that the husband who is deprived of normal fatherhood may yet make the child of his wife's body partly his own, if his thoughts are with her intensely, supportingly and joyously throughout the whole time of the unborn baby's growth. If he reads to her, plays beautiful music or takes her to hear it, and gives her the very best of his thoughts and aspirations, mystical though the conclusion may seem, he does attain an actual measure of fatherhood. ”

“ It is a serious reflection on our poisoned "civilization" that a pregnant woman should feel shame to appear in the streets. Never will the race reach true health till it is cured of its prurient sickness, and the prospective mother can carry her sacred burden as a priestess in a triumphal procession. ”

“ This mystical and wonderful fact has never yet found the poet to sing its full glory. But in the hearts of all who have known true love lies the realization of the sacredness that is theirs when they are in the very act of creation. ”

“ Were our bodies specifically organized for this supreme purpose, two human beings would only pass through the sacred fire of mutual fusion in order to create a new life. But, however far our spirits have evolved, our bodies are composed of matter which bears the imprint of the many past phases through which we have reached our present position. ”

“ Once such a thought has grown into a man's mind it is very difficult "to recapture the first early rapture." And with the loss of that early rapture the two lose, for the rest of their lives, the irradiating joy which is priceless not only for its beauty but for the vitality with which its wings are laden. ”

“ While in the whole human relation there is no slavery or torture so horrible as coerced, unwilling motherhood, there is no joy and pride greater than that of a woman who is bearing the developing child of a man she adores. ”

“ When, however, we observe the admirable sanctity of the pregnant females of the woodland creatures, and when we consider the extraordinary ignorance and disregard of woman's needs which mark so many of our modern customs, we cannot but think that the safe side of this debatable question must be in the complete continence of the woman for at least six months before the birth of the child. I have heard from a number of women, however, that they desire union urgently at this time, and from others that the thought of it is incredible. ”

“ Even when a child is allowed to grow in its mother, all these hundreds of millions of spermatozoa are inevitably and naturally destroyed every time the man has an emission; and to add one more to these millions sacrificed by nature is surely no crime! To render inert the ejaculated spermatozoa which would otherwise die and decompose naturally, is a simple matter, now familiar to every intelligent physician and layman. ”

“ The idea that the soul and character of the child can be in any degree influenced by the mental status of the mother during the months of its development as an embryo within her body, is apt to be greeted with pure skepticism – for it is difficult of proof, and repugnant to the male intellect, now accustomed to explain life in terms of chemistry. ”

“ A man swayed by such pseudo-religious ignorance will allow his wife to bear and bring forth an infant annually. Save where the woman is exceptional, each child following so rapidly on its predecessor, saps and divides the vital strength which is available for the making of the offspring. This generally lowers the vitality of each succeeding child, and surely even if slowly, may murder the woman who bears them. ”

“ The germ cells of the woman, though immeasurably less numerous than the male germ cells (the spermatozoa) , yet develop uselessly over and over again in every celibate as well as in every married woman. And myriads of sperm cells are destroyed even in the process of the act which does ensure fertilization of the woman by the single favored spermatozoön. If the theologians really mean what they say, and demand the voluntary effort of complete celibacy from all men, save for the purpose of procreation, this will not achieve their end of preventing the wastage of all potential life ”

“ For the supposed sake of one or two of these myriad spermatozoa which must naturally and inevitably die, they encourage the production of babies in rapid succession, which are weakened by their proximity, while they might have been sturdy and healthy, had they been conceived further apart from each other.
Such people, while awake to the claims of the unborn, nay, even of the unconceived, are blind to the claims of the one who should be dearest of all to the husband, and for whose health and happiness he is responsible. ”

“ Only those actions are worthy which lead the race onwards to a higher and fuller completion and the perfecting of its powers, which steer the race into the main current of that stream of life and vitality which courses through us and impels us forward. ”

“ Tolstoy strongly condemned any sex-contact while the wife was pregnant or nursing, and blamed the husband who "puts upon her the unbearable burden of being at one and the same time a mistress, an exhausted mother, and a sickly, irritable, hysterical individual. And the husband loves her as his mistress, ignores her as a mother, and hates her for the irritability and hysteria which he himself has produced and produces." His view is taken by many of our noblest men. ”

“ With an ardent man, wholly devoted to his wife and long deprived of her, the time will come when it will be sufficient for him to be near her and caress her for relief to take place without any physical connection, if, as every wife should, she has retained after marriage that dainty modesty which renders the sight of her bosom and of her beauty a privilege and a joy to her husband. ”

“ While the wife feels that she cannot allow her husband to enter the portals of her body when it has become the sacred temple of a developing life, she should also consider the perpetual strain which nature imposes upon him; and the tender and loving wife will readily find some means of giving him that physical relief which his nature needs. ”

“ Ploetz found that while the death rate of first born infants is about 220 per thousand, the death rate of the seventh born is about 330, and of the twelfth born is 597 per thousand. So that when "nature" has its way, and twelve children come to sap a woman's vitality, so little strength has she that nearly 60 per cent. of these later ones die. What a waste of vitality! ”

“ Where the injection is undertaken by a woman doctor, the husband need have no feeling that his wife has been violated. And while it is not certain that this method would succeed in giving the child she longs for to the woman, yet there are sufficient records in the medical profession of successful artificial insemination for it to offer much hope to a pair who have been denied perfectly normal parenthood either through the husband's actual sterility or the lack of mutual adjustment in their organs, or from an ill-understood lack of chemical affinity. ”

“ The converse, where the wife is really barren and the husband capable of having children with another woman, is a much more difficult problem. Then the attainment of children by the man is impossible without the collaboration of another woman in a manner not recognized by our laws and customs. Even if this is done, it is clear that to introduce the child of another woman into the home is demanding a much greater self-abnegation from the wife than is demanded from the husband in the situation we have just considered. ”

“ Though it is natural that there should not be the same joy for the pair in a child which had not arisen from their own supreme fusion, nevertheless, the man who is generous and broad-minded might find much joy in a child of his wife's, were the obtaining of this child not coupled with the yielding of her body to the embrace of another man, which is so generally and so naturally repugnant to a husband. ”

“ Many attempts at artificial impregnation of the human female have been made, but the successes have been so few and far between, that the method is never likely to acquire a great vogue. For some centuries to come we will have to depend upon the old-fashioned natural method for the perpetuation of the human race. ”

“ In this book I am not speaking so much of the universal sex relation, as to those who find themselves to-day in the highly civilized, artificial communities of English speaking people: and in our present society there is little doubt that the early birth of a child demands much self-sacrifice and self-restraint from the man, one of the reflex vibrations of which is his undefinable sense of loss and separation from his bride. ”

“ Of course, the effects of this strain upon the woman vary greatly according to her original health and vitality, the conditions of her surroundings and the intensity of the family's struggle for food. A half-starved mother trying to bring up children in the foul air of city slums, loses, as a rule, far more of her family than a comfortable and well-fed woman in the country. ”

“ The old-fashioned view was that the fault lay with the woman, and the reproach of being a barren woman is one which has brought untold anguish to many hearts. It is now beginning to be recognized, however, that in a childless union, the "fault," if fault it be, is as often the man's as the woman's, particularly where the husband is a brain-worker in a city. ”

“ And because in the world of the lower animals there is an immense wastage of all the young lives created, and it is necessary that myriads should be conceived in order that a small number should reach maturity, so in our bodies (specialized though they are in comparison with the lower animals) both sexes still produce a far larger number of germs awaiting fertilization than can be actually fructified and imbued with individual life. ”

“ Many people whose ideals are very noble are yet strangely incapable of adapting the material acts of life to the real fulfilment of their ideals. Thus there is a section of our community which insists that there should be no restriction whatever of the number of children born to married people. ”

“ It seems almost incredible that in some countries medical men who are not ashamed to throw young men into the arms of prostitution, blush when mention is made of anti-conceptional methods. This false modesty, created by custom and prejudice, waxes indignant at innocent things while it encourages the greatest infamies. ”

“ They take their stand upon the statement that we have no right to destroy potential life. But if they would study a little human or animal physiology they would find that not only every celibate, but also every married man incessantly and inevitably wastes myriads of germs which had the potentiality of fusion with an ovum, and consequently could have produced a child had opportunity been given them. ”

“ The exquisite unselfish tenderness which is aroused in a man by the sense of mental and spiritual harmony with a wife who sympathizes with, because she understands his needs is one of the loveliest things in marriage. A wife who knows how to waken this tenderness in a man raises him out of the self-centered slough in which so many men wallow unhappily. ”

“ For many reasons it is more ideal to have the children spontaneously and early; but if economic conditions are hard, as they so often are in "civilized" life, it may be better to marry and defer the children rather than not to marry. ”

“ As a woman should for several reasons wait six weeks or two months after the birth of the child before resuming sex relations, it follows that with each pregnancy the husband would have to be abstinent for a period of about eight months. ”

“ To those who protest that we have no right to interfere with the course of nature, one must point out that the whole of civilization, everything which separates man from animals, is an interference with what such people commonly call "nature." ”

“ After the birth of the first child the health of the mother and of the baby both demand that there should be no hurried beginning of a second. At least a year should pass before the second little life is allowed to begin its unfolding, so that a minimum of about two years should elapse before the second child is born. ”

“ It is important to observe that Holland, the country which takes most care that children shall be well and voluntarily conceived, has increased its survival-rate, and has thereby not diminished but increased its population, and has the lowest infant mortality in Europe. ”