Learn at first hand what it means to
make a broken drudge of a woman who might have been the happy mother
of a few strong children. Learn from the words of the victims of
involuntary motherhood what it means to them, to their children and to
society to force the physically unfit or the unwilling to bear
children. When you have learned, stop to ask yourself what is the
worth of the law, the moral code, the tradition, the religion, that
for the sake of an outworn dogma of submission would wreck the lives
of these women, condemn their progeny to pain, want, disease and
helplessness. Ask yourself if these letters, these cries of despair,
born of the anguish of woman's sex slavery are not in themselves
enough to stop the mouths of the demagogues, the imperialists and the
ecclesiastics who clamor for more and yet more children? And if the
pain of others has no power to move your heart and stir your hands and
brain to action, ask yourself the more selfish question: Can the
children of these unfortunate mothers be other than a burden to
society--a burden which reflects itself in innumerable phases of cost,
crime and general social detriment?
"For our own sakes--for our children's sakes--" plead the mothers,
"help us! Let us be women, rather than breeding machines.
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