hristian_ matrons, members of
churches, and walking in the better classes of society.

We appeal to all such with earnest and with threatening words. If they
have no feeling for the fruit of their womb, if maternal sentiment is so
callous in their breasts, let them know that such produced abortions are
the constant cause of violent and dangerous womb diseases, and
frequently of early death; that they bring on mental weakness, and often
insanity; that they are the most certain means to destroy domestic
happiness which can be adopted. Better, far better, to bear a child
every year for twenty years than to resort to such a wicked and
injurious step; better to die, if needs be, in the pangs of childbirth,
than to live with such a weight of sin on the conscience.

There is no need of either. By the moderation we have mentioned, it is
in the power of any woman to avoid the evils of an excessive family,
without injury and without criminality.

We feel obliged to speak in plain language of this hidden sin, because
so many are ignorant that it is a sin. Only within a few years have
those who take in charge the public morals spoken of it in such terms
that this excuse of ignorance is no longer admissible.

Bishop Coxe, of New York, in a pastoral letter, the late Archbishop
Spaulding, Catholic Primate of the United States, in an address at the
close of a recent Provincial Council at Baltimore, the Old and New
School Presbyterian Churches, at a meeting in Philadelphia, have all
pronounced the severest judgments against those guilty of antenatal
infanticide. Appeals through the press have been made by physicians of
high standing, and by eminent divines, which should be in the hands of
every one.

The chiefest difficulty hitherto has been, that while women were warned
against the evils of abortion, they were offered no escape from the
exhaustion and dangers of excessive child-bearing. This difficulty we
have fully recognised and fairly met, and, we believe, in such a manner
that neither the accuracy of our statements nor the purity of our
motives can be doubted. Should our position be attacked, however, the
medical man must know that in opposing our views, he opposes those of
the most distinguished physicians in Europe and in America; and the
theologian should be warned that, when a neglect of physical laws leads
to moral evil, the only way to correct this evil is to remedy the
neglect. In this case the neglect is over-productio