CHAPTER II:  Conscripted Motherhood

“Their poor, old ravaged and stiffened faces, their poor, old bodies dried up with ceaseless toil, their patient souls made me weep.  They are our conscripts.  They are the venerable ones whom we should reverence.  All the mystery of womanhood seems incarnated in their ugly being—­the Mothers! the Mothers!  Ye are all one!”

     —­From the Letters of William James

Motherhood, which is not only the oldest but the most important profession in the world, has received few of the benefits of civilization.  It is a curious fact that a civilization devoted to mother-worship, that publicly professes a worship of mother and child, should close its eyes to the appalling waste of human life and human energy resulting from those dire consequences of leaving the whole problem of child-bearing to chance and blind instinct.  It would be untrue to say that among the civilized nations of the world to-day, the profession of motherhood remains in a barbarous state.  The bitter truth is that motherhood, among the larger part of our population, does not rise to the level of the barbarous or the primitive.  Conditions of life among the primitive tribes were rude enough and severe enough to prevent the unhealthy growth of sentimentality, and to discourage the irresponsible production of defective children.  Moreover, there is ample evidence to indicate that even among the most primitive peoples the function of maternity was recognized as of primary and central importance to the community.

If we define civilization as increased and increasing responsibility based on vision and foresight, it becomes painfully evident that the profession of motherhood as practised to-day is in no sense civilized.  Educated people derive their ideas of maternity for the most part, either from the experience of their own set, or from visits to impressive hospitals where women of the upper classes receive the advantages of modern science and modern nursing.  From these charming pictures they derive their complacent views of the beauty of motherhood and their confidence for the future of the race.  The other side of the picture is revealed only to the trained investigator, to the patient and impartial observer who visits not merely one or two “homes of the poor,” but makes detailed studies of town after town, obtains the history of each mother, and finally correlates and analyzes this evidence.  Upon such a basis are we able to draw conclusions concerning this strange business of bringing children into the world.

Every year I receive thousands of letters from women in all parts of America, desperate appeals to aid them to extricate themselves from the trap of compulsory maternity.  Lest I be accused of bias and exaggeration in drawing my conclusions from these painful human documents, I prefer to present a number of typical cases recorded in the reports of the United States Government, and in the evidence of trained and impartial investigators of social agencies more generally opposed to the doctrine of Birth Control than biased in favor of it.