The walls of the cloister have fallen before the cries of a rising
womanhood. The barriers of prurient puritanism are being demolished.
Free woman has torn the veil of indecency from the secrets of life to
reveal them in their power and their purity. Womanhood yet bound has
beheld and understood. A public whose thoughts and opinions had been
governed by men and by women engulfed in the old order has been
shocked awake.
Sneers and jests at birth control are giving way to a reverent
understanding of the needs of woman. They who to-day deny the right of
a woman to control her own body speak with the hardihood of invincible
ignorance or with the folly of those blind ones who in all ages have
opposed the light of progress. Few there are to insist openly that
woman remain a passive instrument of reproduction. The subject of
birth control is being lifted out of the mire into which it was cast
by puritanism and given its proper place among the sciences and the
ideals of this generation. With this effort has come an illumination
of all other social problems. Society is beginning to give ear to the
promise of modern womanhood: "When you have ceased to chain me, I
shall by the virtue of a free motherhood remake the world.
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