rce, when she has been
abandoned, or when, in the interests of the community, it is
desirable to prevent the propagation of insane, criminal,
alcoholic, or tuberculous persons.

In France, a medical man, Dr. Jean Darricarrere, has written a
remarkable novel, _Le Droit d'Avortement_ (1906), which advocates
the thesis that a woman always possesses a complete right to
abortion, and is the supreme judge as to whether she will or not
undergo the pain and risks of childbirth. The question is, here,
however, obviously placed not on medical, but on humanitarian and
feminist grounds.

We have seen that, alike on the side of practice and of theory, a great
change has taken place during recent years in the attitude towards
abortion. It must, however, clearly be recognized that, unlike the control
of procreation by methods for preventing conception, facultative abortion
has not yet been embodied in our current social morality. If it is
permissible to interpolate a personal opinion, I may say that to me it
seems that our morality is here fairly reasonable.[442] I am decidedly of
opinion that an unrestricted permission for women to practice abortion in
their own interests, or even for communities to practice it in the
interests of the race, would be to reach beyond the stage of civilization
we have at present attained. As Ellen Key very forcibly argues, a
civilization which permits, without protest, the barbarous slaughter of
its carefully selected adults in war has not yet won the right to destroy
deliberately even its most inferior vital products in the womb. A
civilization guilty of so reckless a waste of life cannot safely be
entrusted with this judicial function. The blind and aimless anxiety to
cherish the most hopeless and degraded forms of life, even of unborn life,
may well be a weakness, and since it often leads to incalculable
suffering, even a crime. But as yet there is an impenetrable barrier
against progress in this direction. Before we are entitled to take life
deliberately for the sake of purifying life, we must learn how to preserve
it by abolishing such destructive influences--war, disease, bad industrial
conditions--as are easily within our social power as civilized
nations.[443]

There is, further, another consideration which seems to me to carry
weight. The progress of civilization is in the direction of greater
foresight, of greater prevention, of a diminished need for