Freeborn

“ But will the law of nature and of nature’s God approve or allow his conduct? This is the precise question under our consideration. We have seen that the infant, a true human being, has a right to live, as well as its mother. “All men are created equal, and have an equal right to life,” declares the first principle of our liberty. ”

“ If they were taught by the speech and daily practice of their medical attendants, that a value attaches to the unborn child, hardly increased by the accident of its birth, they also would be persuaded or compelled to a similar belief in its sanctity, and to a commensurate respect. ”

“ If the baby's skull has a certain conformation it can only be an idiot; with another skull and brain it may be developed into a Shakespeare or a Dante. The possibilities ranging between those limits are immovably fixed at birth. And what determines the constitution with which the child is born? Surely it can be nothing but the constitution and circumstances of its parents. Whether I can be a great man, or cannot be more than a commonplace man, or a fool,—nay, whether I shall be man or monkey or an oak,—is settled before I have had any power of volition at all. ”

“ Yes—this is what I have been preaching to the unborn—the choice of their parents before consenting to be born! Compulsory birth must be swept away. What! would you sweep away all checks upon the individuality of the individual—once he is born would you tear asunder all the swaddling-bands of our baby civilisation; would you replace the rules of the nursery by the orderly anarchy of manhood and womanhood, and yet retain such an incoherent anachronism as compulsory birth—a disability which often cripples a man upon the very threshold of his career? ”

“ If there be such a thing as a natural birthright, I can conceive of none superior to the right of the child to be informed, at first by proxy through his guardians, and afterwards personally, of the life-history, medical and other, of his ancestry. The child is thrust into existence without his having any voice at all in the matter, and the smallest amend that those who brought him here can make, is to furnish him with all the guidance they can, including the complete life-histories of his near progenitors. ”

“ Seriously, is it not an astonishing fact, that though on the treatment of offspring depend their lives or deaths, and their moral welfare or ruin; yet not one word of instruction on the treatment of offspring is ever given to those who will by and by be parents? Is it not monstrous that the fate of a new generation should be left to the chances of unreasoning custom, impulse, fancy—joined with the suggestions of ignorant nurses and the prejudiced counsel of grandmothers? ”

“ PARENT'S PARTICIPATION.—Each parent furnishing at indispensable portion of the materials of life, and somehow or other, contributes parentally to the formation of the constitutional character of their joint product, appears far more reasonable, than to ascribe, as many do, the whole to either some to paternity, others to maternity. Still this decision go which way it may, does not affect the great fact that children inherit both the physiology and the mentality existing in parents at the time they received being and constitution. ”

“ In what way for instance do we come to associate life within the womb with freedom from effort, difficulty or danger? In the majority of cases, not from conscious thinking on the subject; on the contrary, the connotation of safety and effortlessness would seem in some way to belong inherently to the idea of pre-natal existence from the very beginning, or at any rate to have become attached to it through a purely unconscious process of association. Again, how do we come into possession of the ideas of birth and pre-natal life themselves? ”

“ To return to the question of rights as affecting the unborn babe: the mother has then so much in her power that she can not only determine to a great extent what kind of infancy the child shall have, but also whether her own duties therein shall be heavy or light. ”

“ How early can the child live?—The infant is incapable, as a rule, of an independent existence, if brought into the world before the end of the sixth month. The law of France regards a child born one hundred and eighty days after wedlock as not only capable of living, but as legitimate and worthy of all legal and civil rights. ”

“ The sheltering arms and the loving breast must always be at hand as the very conditions of its existence. I have watched in wife and daughters, as what grandsire has not, the persistent sleepless care which alone kept the baby alive, and noted the sweet effusion of affection which the need and constant care made to flow abundantly, nor do the care and consequent outflow of love cease with babyhood. The child must ever be fed, clothed, trained, and counselled; and the youth, too, of which the baby is father, must be watchfully guided till the stature is completed. ”

“ By rendering easily possible a selection in parentage and the choice of the right time and circumstances for conception it is, again, the chief key to the eugenic improvement of the race. There are many other benefits, as is now generally becoming clear, which will be derived from the rightly applied practice of birth-control. To many of us it is not the least of these that birth-control effects finally the complete liberation of the spiritual object of marriage. ”

“ A baby is born to us. The law says that the child's birth must be registered within a few weeks, if it be born in wedlock; if born out of wedlock, its birth must be notified within three days. Why? To safeguard the new life, and in the case of the poor little "unwanted" mites, to prevent baby farming and infanticide. A marriage is to take place. ”

“ The difference between ancient and modern times is remarkable in nothing more than in the treatment of babies. Human life, merely as such, was considered less sacred then than now, and the average view of the baby was simply utilitarian. Was the baby, male or female, a healthy baby? Was it likely to become a sturdy citizen or a stout soldier, or to be the capable mother of strong children? Then let the baby live. ”

“ It retains them, and they become the characteristics of the child and the man. Low spirits, violent passions, irritability, frivolity, in the pregnant woman, leave indelible marks on the unborn child.
8. FORMATION OF CHARACTER.—I believe that pre-natal influences may do as much in the formation of character as all the education that can come after, and that mothers may, in a measure, "will," what that influence shall be, and that, as knowledge on the subject increases, it will be more and more under their control. ”

“ Some medical men consider the foetus, until it is born, as a portion of the mother which may be destroyed to save her life. This view is not in keeping with Christian principles, according to which the child has a soul of its own, and has its own independent right to live. ”

“ A change of the status of the mother from liberty to slavery during pregnancy was always construed favorably to the child, who thus might be born free if the mother was free for even the shortest time during the period of pregnancy. ”

“ On the principles that will probably animate the predominant classes of the new time, it will be permissible, and I have little or no doubt that in the future it will be planned and achieved.
If birth were all the making of a civilized man, the men of the future, on the general principles we have imputed to them, would under no circumstances find the birth of a child, healthy in body and brain, more than the most venial of offences. But birth gives only the beginning, the raw material, of a civilized man. ”

“ Theretofore, mankind had presumed that all procreation resided in the "loins of the father." They had looked upon the mother as being merely a provision for nurturing the unborn and nursing the newborn. ”

“ In regard to cases where children are marked before birth, he says: “The effect must be produced upon the maternal blood, and transmitted through it to the fœtus, since there is no nervous communication between the parent and offspring.”
On every hand, life is full of facts illustrative of the influence of the mental and physical conditions of the mother on the organic structure and constitutional tendencies of the body and soul of her unborn child. ”

“ It is surprising that a man who was the father of two children should accuse himself of depopulating the Earth. And yet it is because I was the father of two children that it happened.
Pre-natal care of mothers and post-natal care of infants were subjects of compelling interest in those days, arriving monthly in the burgeoning women's magazines and annually in the proliferous child-care manuals. Pediatricians and mothers besieged parents with advice, and we consumed everything with catholic appetite: logical, illogical, sensible, insensible, nonsensical, self-contradictory. ”

“ The idea of prenatal culture as commonly taught is a delusion; the only method that the mother can employ to control the growth of her unborn child is to live a wholesome, normal life, [1298] physically and mentally, and thus supply her own body and that of the child with perfect material for the building of living cells. ”

“ If there exists no condition in either parent or in their circumstances why they should not have children, the next consideration due to their children, is how the same may be procreated under the most favorable conditions possible; this condition can only be secured by making the circumtsances such that the mother shall be able to choose the time for their conception when both parents are in the best physical condition. ”

“ A child nursed beyond twelve months is very apt, if he should live, to be knock-kneed, and bow-legged, and weak-ankled, to be narrow-chested, and chicken-breasted." If pregnancy occur, and the mother be nursing, the consequences affect alike the mother, the babe, and the unborn child. ”

“ Birth Control, in the true meaning of the term, therefore, is seen to consist not of the prohibition or prevention of human offspring, but rather of the governing, regulating, and managing of the production of human offspring, under the inspiration of the highest ideals and under the direction of the highest reason, for the purpose of the advancement and welfare of the race and that of the individuals composing the race. ”

“ The dilemma defined.—The moral law, and our natural human sympathy, insist that we should seek to preserve all the children that come into the world, to amplify the health of the healthy, and to neutralise, as far as possible, the unfitness of the unfit. A mother brings her malformed baby to the surgeon, and he does his best to patch up the gaps left by the imperfect processes of development. Otherwise the baby will die. ”

“ Refer to the agony and settled melancholy with which unborn children in the womb regard birth as the extinction of their being, and how some declare that there is a world beyond the womb and others deny this. “We must all one day be born,” “Birth is certain” and so on, just as we say of death. Birth involves with it an original sin. It must be sin, for the wages of sin is death (what else, I should like to know, is the wages of virtue?) and assuredly the wages of birth is death. ”

“ Maternity, and the relation in which it originates, are thrust upon them by their husbands, often without regard to their spiritual or physical conditions, and often in contempt of their earnest and urgent entreaties. No joy comes to their heart at the conception and birth of their children, except that which arises from the consciousness that they have survived the sufferings wantonly and selfishly inflicted upon them. ”

“ Parents may recognize that right, study the laws of pre-natal influence, and so apply them as to intensify in their offspring every good quaiity they themselves possess, and greatly remedy every defect. If only a majority of our people would do this, the life of the nation would be transformed in a generation. ”

“ The difficult question, as to whether the intra-uterine fetus may be killed to save the mother's life, when otherwise both mother and child are in danger of perishing, hinges upon the following funda- mental principles of Catholic, and, I hope also, of Christian, morals :
I. Thou shalt not kill.
II. Uterine life must be respected as much as the extra-uterine. ”

“ In legislation introduced at my request in the First Session of the 100th Congress, I have asked the Legislative branch to declare the "humanity of the unborn child and the compelling interest of the several states to protect the life of each person before birth." ”

“ Some day we shall surround marriage and child-bearing with every manner of safeguard and ultimately the major findings of eugenics will be embodied into law and statute. The duty of parents to a child born to them is high, but highest of all at times may be the duty of leaving children unborn. ”

“ Remember that your own physical condition and the health of the baby you will bring into the world depend largely upon your mental attitude. Cast out all fear of childbirth and all dread of maternal duties and sacrifices. Fretting, grieving, or rebellion will not purchase immunity from maternal duties. Rather it will increase them. The child will be born and laid in your arms to be fed, cared for, and reared, whether you weep or smile through the months of pregnancy. ”