The physical suffering to be
relieved is chiefly woman's. Hers, too, is the love life that dies
first under the blight of too prolific breeding. Within her is wrapped
up the future of the race--it is hers to make or mar. All of these
considerations point unmistakably to one fact--it is woman's duty as
well as her privilege to lay hold of the means of freedom. Whatever
men may do, she cannot escape the responsibility. For ages she has
been deprived of the opportunity to meet this obligation. She is now
emerging from her helplessness. Even as no one can share the suffering
of the overburdened mother, so no one can do this work for her. Others
may help, but she and she alone can free herself.
The basic freedom of the world is woman's freedom. A free race cannot
be born of slave mothers. A woman enchained cannot choose but give a
measure of that bondage to her sons and daughters. No woman can call
herself free who does not own and control her body. No woman can call
herself free until she can choose consciously whether she will or will
not be a mother.
It does not greatly alter the case that some women call themselves
free because they earn their own livings, while others profess freedom
because they defy the conventions of sex relationship.
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