CRIMINAL ABORTION; 
ITS EXTENT AND PREVENTION. 
HEAD BEFORE THE 
PHILADELPHIA COUNTY MEDICAL SOCIETY, 
FEBRUARY 9, 1870. 
BY THE RETIRING PRESIDENT, 
ANDREW NEBINGER, M.D. 
PUBLISHED BY ORDER OF THE SOCIETY. 
PHILADELPHIA: 
COLLINS, PRINTER, 705 JAYNE STREET. 
1 870. CRIMINAL ABORTION; 
ITS EXTENT AND PREVENTION 
READ BEFORE THE 
PHILADELPHIA COUNTY MEDICAL SOCIETY, 
FEBRUARY 9, 1870. 
BY THE R E T I R I P R E S I D E N T, 
ANDREW NEBINGER M.D. 
PUBLISHED BY ORDER OF THE SOCIETY. 
PHILADELPHIA: 
COLLINS, PRINTER, 705 JAYNE STREET 
1870. “ He is the freeman whom the truth makes free, 
All else are slaves beside ; there’s not a chain 
That hellish foes confederate for his harm, they 
Wind around him, but he cast3 off, 
With as much ease as Samson his green withes." 
Cowper. A D D-R ESS. 
MR. PRESIDENT, AND MEMBERS OF THE 
PHILADELPHIA COUNTY MEDICAL SOCIETY, 
I have selected for my subject, one to which I have given 
no inconsiderable thought and research during the past ten 
years, as the records of the Philadelphia County Medical So- 
ciety attest—a subject, which, because of its peculiarity and the 
special interests involved, has pressed itself upon me, as it has 
pressed itself upon the attention of every physician in large 
and active practice—a subject, indeed, whose physical, physio- 
logical, and moral aspects are such as to actively enlist, if not 
demand, the thoughtful attention of every lover of his species, 
every moralist, jurist, and political economist. The subject 
matter of my theme may not be to all inviting, nor yet to 
many even entertaining, but to you I hope it will not be devoid 
of interest, nor barren in information. Be this, however, as it 
may, you will not be able I feel to question my facts, nor 
my motives, which to me are matters of much importance. 
Criminal Abortion, to be considered and presented in all its 
vastness of moral infamy—its wilful destruction of ante-natal 
human life, the amount of maternal lives destroyed, the extent 
of uterine and other diseases entailed by its practice, and the 
inefficiency of the laws to limitedly meet and even partially 
control the onward march, of this rapidly growing “fashionable 
crime,” would require not only an essay of ordinary size to be 
prepared, but would require the compass of a volume. I have 4 
therefore determined to present the subject in such form only, 
or rather such phases of it, as will I hope tend still further to 
excite and awaken than is already the case, the spirit of inquiry 
and reform, not only among the members of the medical pro- 
fession, but especially among the members of the clerical pro- 
fession and legislators. I desire especially to arouse the atten- 
tion of these two classes, and to invoke their co-operation in 
the good work of crushing out the crime—the one, by impart- 
ing the proper instruction in relation to the moral turpitude of 
the crime—the other, the creation of such laws as shall fully 
meet the necessities which now exist in regard to the punish- 
ment of those, who engage in the practice of the crime. When 
these two classes shall be fully aroused to the importance of the 
labor, and zealously co-operative in the work of preventing 
and punishing, the commission of the crime, I feel confi- 
dent that, then the prevention and cure of this terrible moral 
evil, with all its entailment of physical suffering, will be more 
than half accomplished. 
To say to you that criminal abortion is now and has 
been for a long series of years on the increase, and that the 
percentage of increase is marked by an excess in every succeed- 
ing year, or decade, is only to express that, which is familiar 
to every one who has paid thoughtful attention to the subject. 
So vast, indeed, is now the practice of the crime, and so uni- 
versal is it, that it finds its patrons and devotees, not only in 
large cities, towns, and hamlets, but in rural districts, and glo- 
ries in embracing alike within its vast, corrupting, and mur- 
derous influence, the ignorant and the educated, the vicious and 
the refined, the professors and non-professors of religion. So 
broad and vastly extended is the practice of criminal abortion, 
and so constant and persistent is its influence over nearly all 
classes of people, that it may be said to be now, and for a great 5 
number of years past, prevailing as a great immoral, body and 
soul-defiling, epidemic. 
To demonstrate this fact, it is only necessary to consult the 
statistics bearing upon this subject, which have been carefully 
collected in such portions of our country and abroad, where the 
laws regulating the registry of births and deaths, are such as 
fully cover the important matters of the natural increase and the 
mortuary decrease of population. 
The statistics in this respect, of the city of New York, of 
Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, and other New Eng- 
land States, present facts and figures which are suggestive of a 
degree and vastness of a peculiar immorality, which, when 
fully comprehended, will fix the conviction, that criminal 
abortion, “the murder of the innocent,” is now in our day 
of such magnitude as to “ out-Herod, Herod,” and to demand the 
most active labors of all those whose efficiency in the correction 
and prevention of this crime is, mainly to be relied upon, in 
freeing the land from this worse than an abomination. 
I have declared that criminal abortion is now and has been 
steadily, for a long series of years on the increase in this coun- 
try. In proof of this declaration, I here present to you a few 
figures of unquestioned and unquestionable correctness: “In 
New York, from 1851 to 1857, there were 48,323 births, and 
5931 stillbirths at the full time and prematurely, or one (1) to 
every 8.1 were born dead” (Storer). These figures indicate 
a mortality, as every accoucheur knows, too great to be 
attributed to the ordinary accidental or unavoidable causes 
which are generally operative in the production of stillbirths 
and therefore, it is fair to attribute the great excess to avoidable 
causes; or, in other words, the result of criminal intentions and 
acts on the part of the mother and her abettors. 
At the present time, the art of obstetrics is more perfect, and 
its practitioners more skilful and expert than at any anterior 6 
period. This improved condition of the obstetric art, and the 
advance in the skill and expertness of obstetricians, is not the 
growth or out-cropping of any recent period, nor has it been of 
sudden development, but is the result of a steady and gradual 
progress made year by year. The number of stillbirths should 
have steadily and relatively decreased as advances were made 
in the art, the intent and best purposes of which are to give the 
mother a safe delivery of living offspring. 
Statistics, however, exhibit the reverse of what we should 
expect, and what certainly would be the case, if stillbirths were 
the result of unavoidable causes only. To present this feature 
of the subject to you in part of its hideousness, I beg here to 
call .your patient attention to some figures compiled from 
statistics collected by Dr. E. Harris, Registrar of Vital Statistics 
in New York, viz :— 
From 1804 to 1809, total mortality, 13,428 ; stillbirths, 349—1 to 37.G 
“ 1809 “ 1815, “ “ 14,011; “ 533—1 “ 26.3 
“ 1815 “ 1825, “ “ 34,798; “ 1818—1 “ 19.1 
“ 1825 “ 1835, “ “ 59,347; “ 3744—1 “ 15.9 
“ 1835 “ 1855, “ “ 289,780; “ 21,702—1 “ 13.3 
1856 “ “ 21,658; “ 1943—1 “ 11.1 
1868 1 “ 10.5 
Thus is the exhibit made, that the percentage of stillbirths to 
the total sum of deaths has been rapidly increasing from 1809, 
when they were in the ratio of one (1) stillborn to every 37.6 
of the total mortality, until, in 1868, we find the ratio of still- 
births has increased to one (1) in 10.5, or that in the-roll of 59 
years they had nearly quadrupled. What is true of New York 
is true of all the other old cities of the United States, as I have 
fully satisfied myself by a close inspection and study of statis- 
tics and facts which have been published in reference to this 
phase of the subject. 
For this startling increase in the ratio of stillbirths to the 7 
entire sum of deaths, there is but one rational cause to which it 
can injustice and candor be assigned, and that, no matter how 
much we may regret the necessity for the admission, is criminal 
abortion. We must, in contemplating these figures and facts, 
not fail to recollect that the number of stillbirths referred to 
by these statistics embody only the sum at most of those foetal 
beings which had passed the so-called, but improperly called, 
period of “ quickening.” The number of those foetuses which 
have not reached this condition, for which there is not any 
numerical qualification, but which may in truth be said to be 
immense, a knowledge of which never reaches the Registrar, 
although to a great degree it does the physician, if added to the 
sum total of stillbirths, would run the figures up so high, that 
if I were to name even a 'proximate number, would not only 
startle you, but tend largely to fix in your minds a conviction, 
which long ago found a place in my own, that the great crime 
of the women of the present era, yea*of the last half century, is 
criminal abortion, from which God deliver them ! 
In “ Harper’s Monthly Magazine” of February, 1869, page 
886, may be found an article, entitled “Changes in population,” 
abounding with a large amount of facts of much importance to 
those who feel an interest in our subject. From that article I 
beg to present-to you a few matters of very decided interest. 
“ In a report upon the comparative view of the population of 
boston in 1849 and 1850, made to the city government November, 
1851, Dr. Jesse Chickering, after a most careful analysis of the 
births and deaths, states that ‘the most important result derived 
from this view is the fact that the whole increase of population 
arising from the excess of births over the deaths for these two years 
has been among the foreign population.’ No higher authority can 
be cited on this subject than that of Dr. Chickering, who devoted 
more time and attention to the changes*of population in Massachu- 
setts than any other person. 
“ An examination of the Registration Reports for a series of 
years as to the relative number of births and deaths in the several 8 
counties, cities, and towns of the State will show this general fact, 
that wherever the births most exceed the deaths, there the foreign 
element most abounds ; but where the population is made up mostly 
or entirely of the original native stock, the births and deaths ap- 
proximate near together, and not unfrequently alternate in excess, 
* first one, then the other. From an examination into the history of 
several towns of this class it was found that for a long series of 
years the deaths had actually exceeded the births. A similar result 
was arrived at from an examination of the births and deaths for 
several years, confined exclusively to the Americans, in two of the 
principal cities of the State. 
“ But one of the most striking evidences of change in this respect 
is in the number and character of the pupils attending the public 
schools. In many school districts of country towns, where the 
population is made up wholly or principally of American stock, 
you can hardly find now children enough to make in numbers a 
respectable school, where once those same neighborhoods thronged 
with children. On the other hand, in large towns and 
where the foreign population abounds, we find an abundance of 
children: the regular schools are crowded, and new schools every 
now and then have to be opened. To such an extent has this 
foreign element increased that in some of the large towns and cities 
of the State it actually comprises full one-half of all the school- 
children in those places. If a majority of all the youth and children 
under fifteen years of age in a place is made up from those of a 
foreign parentage, and is relatively increasing in number every 
37ear, how long will it be before such a power will be felt in the 
management, if not in the control, of the municipal government of 
those towns and cities ? 
“ In Connecticut, where the proportion of the foreign class is 
much less than in Massachusetts, the School Report for 1866 states 
‘ that the relative number of children had been steadily decreasing 
for the last forty 37ears,’ and the Report for 1861 states that the 
number was less even than in the previous year. The State of 
in which there is still less of the foreign element, reports 
relatively a less proportion of children than either of the New Eng- 
land States. In the Registration Report of Arermont for 1858 is 
found this remarkable comparison. It states ‘ that while the pro- 
ducing part of the population, say from fifteen to fifty, was almost 
in precisely the same proportion to the whole population as that in 
England, the birth-rate in A-'ermont was 1 in 49, and in England 9 
(the same year) it was 1 in 31and should the foreign element, as 
small as it is, be separated, the birth-rate would be still lower—in 
fact, only about one-lialf as large as that of England. Considering 
that this comparison is made between a people engaged in agricul- 
tural pursuits, and somewhat scattered in settlement, with a popu- 
lation situated as that of England is, living mostly in cities and 
thickly settled places, and composed largely of the extremes in 
society, the result is surprising.” 
Nowit will not be contended by me that this non-production 
of offspring on the part of the Americans is entirely the result 
of the practice of criminal abortion, or the effect of the recourse 
to other censurable means for the purpose of -preventing the 
increase of families, but I am ready to urge and prove that it 
is the result mainly of the practice of criminal abortion. 
Early in 1867, a committee was appointed by the Philadel- 
phia County Medical Society to inquire into the extent of the 
practice of criminal abortion in Philadelphia, and to suggest a 
plan by which that crime might be abated; if possible prevented. 
The committee had several meetings, and had made consider- 
able advance in the collection of the material necessary to the 
completion of a* report, when, from the pressing public duties 
and commanding private engagements of its chairman, the late 
and lamented Dr. Wilson Jewell, the further prosecution of the 
duties of the committee was prevented. 
Being a member of the committee, and learning from Dr. 
Jewell a few weeks before his death, that he felt indisposed to 
further prosecute the work confided to the committee, I solicited 
from him the.papers, letters, and documents which had accumu- 
lated in his hands as chairman of the committee, assuring him, 
that I would use the facts in a paper which I would prepare 
and present to this Society. The doctor kindly placed the 
papers, letters, and documents in my possession, and I am now 
about to redeem my promise, made to one who, as a zealous 
member of this Society, ever active and ever ready to contri- 10 
bute more than his full quota of labor and intelligence to ad- 
vance the great objects of its organization, commanded my 
admiration and profound respect—as, I am sure, he did yours. 
Part of the committee’s plan for obtaining a knowledge of 
the extent of the practice of criminal abortion in this city, was 
the issuing a circular, chiefly interrogatory, to all the regular 
physicians in practice in Philadelphia. 
Of the many who received the circular, a few only responded. 
It is to be regretted that the interrogatories were not more 
largely replied to, for, judging from the replies received, had the 
responses been anything like equal to the number of circulars 
issued, there would have been a sum of facts, and an amount of 
information in regard to the practice of criminal abortion col- 
lected, which, while they would have exhibited an almost appal- 
ling sum of a peculiar infamy, would have given more extended 
and still further positive data, upon which to base the super- 
structure of a preventive plan. Fifty-nine physicians honored 
the committee with replies, some in brief, others in extenso. 
Among the questions propounded was, “ What proportion of 
your cases of abortion do you believe to have*been criminally 
produced?” To this, nineteen of the fifty-nine answered, that 
one-half of all their cases were wilfully or criminally produced. 
Tweuty-one, that one-fourth. Eleven, that a large majority; 
and another, that seventy-five per cent, of his cases of abortion 
were criminally brought about. Seven failed to answer the 
query, 
The facts thus collected, although garnered from only fifty- 
nine physicians, exhibit an amount and degree of a peculiar 
crime, well calculated to arouse the attention, not only of the 
medical profession, but of the divine, the moralist, and the 
legislator, and to unite them in the good and holy work of de- 
vising a plan by which the onward march of this iniquity may 
at least be retarded, if not completely arrested. 11 
I have said that these replies were elicited from only fifty- 
nine physicians, yet as these physicians were practising in 
all sections of our city—north, south, east, west, and central 
—it is fair to infer that they fully represent the entire pro- 
fession, as regards its acquaintance with criminal abortion. 
If this inference be just, then to what a startling degree and 
extraordinary sum of crime at home, do these replies call at- 
tention. To what an extent of shameless abandonment to a 
peculiar kind of wickedness, on the part of the women of this 
city, do these revelations point; and as these revelations are 
but the repetition, as it were, of the same reports elicited from 
the profession in every large city, and more especially the older 
ones of this land, to what an almost incredible amount of 
foeticide, is our attention thus directed. 
Let me repeat the testimony—one-half say many, one-third 
say others, one-fourth others again declare, and yet another, as 
if to overwhelm with the magnitude of the crime, states that 
75 per cent, annually, of all the cases of abortion, are criminal 
—yea, are the results, my hearers, of premeditation, of cool, 
calm, and deliberate determination, with “malice prepense and 
aforethought,” to lay or cause to be laid, murderous hands upon 
the helpless being, guiltless of all wrong, and which, both in- 
tra-uterine and extra-uterine, has the most enlarged and un- 
doubted claims upon the care, kindness, and protection of her 
who conceived it. Almighty God ! I reverently ask, can it be, 
that the women who practise so largely and so repeatedly this 
crime, are in knowledge of its magnitude in thy sight? Can 
it be, that with a correct estimate of its enormity, and in full 
knowledge of the fact that they violate the command given 
amid the thunders of the Mount—“ Thou shalt not kill”—that 
in destroying the fruit of their womb they commit murder, foul 
and bloody, and walk the earth as did Ilerod of old, all stained 
and spotted with the blood of unoffending innocence, and, 12 
that at the bar of the Great Judge, they will have to answer for 
their wilful and wanton destruction of human life—and that, too, 
the life of all others which they should most have nurtured 
and protected. Heaven forbid, that woman, whose goodness, 
purity, chastity, and religion have so often and so deservedly 
been the theme of poets and the subject of panegyrists, should 
only, yea, only, in exceptionable cases, be in knowledge of the 
nature of the crime which she commits and thfe degree of her 
offence when she kills, or permits to be killed, her unborn babe. 
If woman is ignorant of the viable condition of the foetus and 
the extent and gravity of the wrong done in destroying her 
conception, and that this, her ignorance, tends to encourage the 
practice of the vice, then it is fair to infer, that the converse of 
this proposition—correct information in regard to the viability 
of the foetus, and the murderous nature of the act of its de- 
struction at any time—would do much to stay the onward flow 
of the bloody current of this crime, and cause woman to shrink 
from its committal, as she would from the horrors of that con- 
science which knows no peaceful rest. Let some plan, some 
blessed plan—blessed because of the good fruit which it will 
produce—be devised by which woman may be promptly and 
fully instructed in all that regards the life of the being in her 
womb, from the moment of its conception; its high and un- 
questionable claims upon her most observant care, that no harm 
shall come to it, and the nature and gravity of the offence, in 
rudely and wilfully thwarting the will of the Almighty, in pre- 
venting the full development in utero of the fruit of her con- 
ception. If the instruction of woman in the physiology of con- 
ception and the development of the babe in her womb, and her 
instruction as to the murderous nature of the offence of de- 
stroying it, will have the much desired effect of largely arresting 
the commission of criminal abortion, as I believe such in- 13 
struction will, there is not any time to be lost in making ready 
a plan for her enlightenment. 
We have seen that the evidence presented clearly makes 
manifest that the practice of criminal abortion is of vast and 
unsightly proportions. Viewing the crime from this stand- 
point, we find more than sufficient to excite us to the work of 
reformation. But when we add to this the other fact, that the 
crime is annually on the increase, there is another incentive to 
engage in the work of reformation. That some positive data 
might be obtained in regard to the increase of the crime in this 
city, the committee referred to, asked in their circular, “ Is it 
your opinion that abortions are on the increase in our com- 
munity?” To this question in sadness I make record that 
there came an affirmative response from all the respondents. 
The united evidence, it may be said of the profession, is not 
only that criminal abortion is extensively practised, but that 
the crime is rapidly marching on, gathering annually blood- 
stained recruits to its murderous ranks and promising by the 
boldness of its perpetration, and its frequent production, if 
positive preventive means be not developed, to render itself 
defiant by the number of its devotees and the universality of 
its commission. “ Why stand we here idle ?” why sleep we 
like an unworthy and never watchful sentinel, wrhen the.citadel 
of woman’s purity is being daily and hourly assailed, and not 
sound the alarm that 11 all is not well with her?”—Oh! for a 
reformer, one who with “throat of brass and adamantine lungs” 
would proclaim from mountain top and the depth of the valley, 
in city and country, in hamlet and village, here, there, and 
everywhere, that he might be heard by every woman, that forced 
abortion, no matter at what time or stage of the development 
of the being it is committed, is, in the sight of God, murder 
most foul and unnatural, and demand of her, as she hopes for 14 
peaceful rest beyond the grave, that she no longer stain her 
hands with the blood of her unborn, unoffending innocent. 
It was, perhaps, not unreasonable for the committee to desire 
to know what were the incentives to the commission df abor- 
tion, hence through the circular the question was asked, “What 
causes in your judgment lead to the production of the crime?” 
The replies present a remarkable similarity, and may be epito- 
mized thus : The unfortunate, or those who conceived out of 
wedlock, to hide their guilt; on the part of the married (and 
they are numerically the chief offenders) the inconvenience 
incident to pregnancy, fear of the pains and risk of labor, but 
mainly, and here I would, if the stern demands of truth and 
the best interest of woman did not urge it, cease making the 
record—but to resume, say they, the act is mainly committed 
to avoid the labor and expense of rearing children, and the 
interference with pleasurable pursuits, fashions, and frivolities. 
Ponder, if you will, for a brief period upon this evidence as to 
the causes inducing the committal of the crime and see how 
perfectly barren, in everything which you would regard as 
even a shadow of a sufficient reason for any woman making 
claim to morality, much more to religion, to induce her to im- 
brue her hands in the blood of her conception, and by the act 
endanger the salvation of her immortal soul. 
These facts demand that I shall here renew the plea for 
woman of ignorance. She sins, yet knows not the magnitude 
of her offence. She violates the command of God, not in the 
fulness of her intelligence, but in the completeness of her 
ignorance. She tears open her womb, or permits it to be 
assailed with instruments or emmenagogues, and the little being 
within its portal to be ruthlessly destroyed, mainly, because she 
does not comprehend the immoral enormity of her conduct. 
I have personal evidence which teaches me that, if woman 
fully comprehended the extent of the crime, she would not for 15 
a few worldly, ephemeral pleasures, or for an exemption from 
a few toils here on earth, risk an eternity of bliss. In entering 
the plea of ignorance in behalf of those guilty of criminal 
abortion, it must not be understood that this plea of ignorance, 
is intended to embrace a want of general intelligence and 
absence of general education. Such is not the case. The 
crime finds its full quota of devotees among those who claim 
to be educated and intelligent. The plea is, ignorance of the 
true physiology of gestation—of the true condition of the 
being at all times while in utero—and this ignorance is as 
great among the ordinarily educated as among the so-called 
uneducated, as I shall take opportunity to demonstrate to you 
by undoubted witnesses. The task is not pleasant, but it must 
be performed. It may appear strange, even improbable, to 
those who have paid but little, if any, attention to the sub- 
ject of criminal abortion, that the crime, so far from being con- 
fined to the lower and middle strata of society, regarding 
them socially and educationally, finds its patrons in large 
proportion in the higher grades of society. The polite, the 
refined, the genteel, the educated, the polished, the worldly 
good, are in this respect not less leprous than those of the lower 
and middle orders of society. That a correct appreciation of 
this statement may be formed, I will introduce to your atten- 
tion some evidence embodied in some of the replies to the 
circular, 
A member of the profession, than whom none in this com- 
munity stands higher both as regards his social and professional 
status, a gentleman noted for the purity of his mind, the extent 
of his learning, and who holds a professorial chair in one of 
the two great medical schools of this city, writes; “ I have been 
shocked beyond measure by having proposals made to me to 
procure abortion, by women of education and respectable posi- 
tion in society, and who were even professors of religion in 16 
some cases. They were in all instances married women, but 
their idea generally was, that the foetus is not alive, but only 
has, as one might say, a capacity for living, and hence that to 
destroy it was not homicide, and hardly more criminal than to 
prevent conception. I have known a married lady, wealthy, 
and of most respectable connections, who, on two occasions 
certainly, was badly injured by an abortionist, whom her hus- 
band employed at her solicitation.” This gentleman continues: 
“ A moral and social gangrene pervades the community, and 
threatens its life, by destroying its very roots which nature in- 
tended should cluster around the domestic hearth.” 
Another gentleman, an ex-Professor, a man of ripened years, 
a close observer, one whose professional duties were largely con- 
fined, during the latter years of his life (for he is now numbered 
with the dead), to the practice of obstetrics and the treatment 
of the diseases of women, I refer to Dr. D. Gilbert, wrote to the 
committee : “ While the moving springs to the perpetration of 
the crime of criminal abortion consist generally of impure mo- 
tives, it is yet true that many persons, who would not know- 
ingly be guilty of an act so improper, do not hesitate to ask 
for relief from pregnancy. I have been often called upon by 
ladies of the most undoubted character, who very innocently 
suppose that it cannot be wrong to produce abortion, so long as 
there is no quickening. I have learned from undoubted sources, 
that many ladies of elevated standing in society and even in 
the church, are in the habit of having abortion produced with- 
out the lest hesitancy as to any impropriety in the procedure.” 
Yet another witness I call before you, one whose practice 
carries him to the bedside of females of all classes and grades 
of society, and who, therefore, has most ample opportunity for 
making himself acquainted with the extent to which the prac- 
tice of criminal abortion is carried, and the relative social pro- 17 
portion that, one class of those who practise criminal abortion 
bears to another. This gentleman makes and has made, for a long 
series of years, diseases of women, and especially uterine affec- 
tions, a specialty. He says: “I believe artificial causes of abor- 
tion are frequent both in the married and unmarried, and more 
frequent in the better classes of society than among the poor.” 
I fain would cease to weary you with this painful and dis- 
gusting history of crime, but injustice to my subject and the 
great purposes of morality and enlightenment, I beg your in- 
dulgence while I introduce to you another who will testify upon 
this branch of the subject. This witness has been a practitioner 
of medicine for 25 years—a gentleman of erudition, having ex- 
tensive practice, and an enviable reputation, both as a teacher 
and practitioner. “ In my earlier practice,” he says, “ I had 
more frequent applications to produce abortion than now. 
Within the past year, however, I have been applied to by three 
different persons of high respectability (married), to get rid of 
the foetus in the early stages of pregnancy—in two of the cases, on 
the ground of the excessive sufferings of the mother during gesta- 
tion; and in the other, simply from the inconvenience of an 
increase of family! My opinion decidedly is,” he continues, 
“ that this sort of criminal abortion is very extensively practised 
among married women without the slightest compunction, and 
as a consequence I believe that the number of children has 
materially fallen off.” 
The learned and honored Professor Hugh L. Hodge, M. D., 
LL. D., says, in speaking of criminal abortion, so far back as 
1854 
“ Would that we could exonerate the moderns from guilt on this 
subject! It is, however, a mournful fact, which ought to be pro- 
mulgated, that this crime, this mode of committing murder, is 
prevalent among the most intelligent, refined, moral, and Christian 
communities. 
“ We blush,” he continues, “ while we record the fact that in this 18 
country, in our own cities and towns, in this city, where literature, 
science, morality, and Christianity are supposed to have so much 
influence ; where all the domestic and social virtues are reported as 
being in full and delightful exercise; even here, individuals, male 
and female, exist, who are continually imbruing their hands and 
consciences in the blood of unborn infants.” * * * 
“ So low,” the Professor continues, “ is the moral sense of the 
community on this subject, so ignorant are the greater number of 
individuals, that even mothers in many instances shrink not from 
the commission of this crime, but will voluntarily destroy their own 
progeny, in violation of every natural sentiment, and in opposition 
to the laws of God and man. 
“ This low estimate,” continues the same authority, “ of the im- 
portance of foetal life, is by no means restricted to the ignorant, or 
the lower classes of society. Educated, refined, and fashionable 
women—yea, in many instances, women whose moral character is, 
in other respects, without reproach. Mothers, who are devoted, 
with an ardent and self-denying affection, to their children who 
already constitute their family, are perfectly indifferent respecting 
the foetus in utero.” * * “We can,” says Professor H., “ bear tes- 
timony that in some instances the woman who has been well edu- 
cated, who occupies high stations in society, whose influence over 
others is great, and whose character has not been impugned, will 
deliberately resort to any and every measure which may effectually 
destroy her unborn offspring.”* 
Taking this evidence en masse, it presents a most shocking 
and painful history of crime and ignorance, which, without 
such evidence, we would be very slow to believe, if indeed we 
received it with any credulity whatever. But such it is, and as 
I have found it, so have I presented it, regretting with all my 
heart that the facts are such, and that society, from its very 
centre to its circumference, is so blurred, begrimed, and black- 
ened with this festering, and, alas, growing infamy, which, with 
one of our witnesses, we may well fear is fast, too fast, develop- 
ing “ a social gangrene in the community, which threatens its 
life by destroying its very roots, which nature intended should 
cluster around the domestic hearth.” 
* Lecture on Criminal Abortion, 1854. 19 
While I am ready and willing to give certain domestic and 
social conditions their full value in influencing the commission 
of the crime of abortion, yet I am convinced, “ beyond the 
shadow of a doubt,” that the ignorance of certain facts on the 
part of women is more effective in causing the commission of 
the crime than all things else combined. An ignorance of the 
great vital and physiological laws of the conception and de- 
velopment of the foetus, and an almost universally erroneous 
belief that the foetus is not viable until the fourth and half- 
month of its development, the usual period of “quickening,” im- 
properly, as I have already remarked, so-called, and an igno- 
rance of the fact, admitted and taught by all physiologists, 
physicians, learned divines, and Rabbis, that the embryo is a 
living being from the moment of its conception—a creature in the 
state and condition of progressive existence, as absolute at and 
from the period of conception, as at any other period of its 
uterine or extra-uterine development. Ignorance of the sinful 
nature of the act of the wanton destruction and dislodgement 
from the womb of the embryo as well at any period before 
as after the term of “ quickening.” Ignorance of the fact, that 
the nature of the crime of the destruction of the being is at all 
times the same, and for which crime there is no other proper 
qualification than, murder. 
I am also convinced, that a wide-spread diffusion of the neces- 
sary information among women, by those in whom they have 
confidence as moral and religious instructors, will in a brief 
cycle very perceptibly diminish, and finally almost entirely 
prevent, the commission of the crime of abortion. Is this 
opinion worth anything ? Are we in possession of any facts 
which justify our conclusion, and fortify the faith which is in 
ns, that the dawn and full realization of such glorious results 
are in the near and as we hope the fast approaching future ? 
Having seen the almost universality of the practice of the 20 
crime, and having, perhaps to the surprise of some, learned that 
its devotees are found in all classes of society—the refined and 
the vulgar vying as it were with each other in the commission 
of the sin—it may be proper at this period of our inquiry to 
make an effort to answer the query, How shall the practice of 
the crime be controlled or prevented ? Oh ! that it should be 
my high province to successfully answer the question. That it 
might be my crowning privilege to suggest a remedy by which 
there should be weeded out from the social and domestic garden 
the foul plant, whose poisonous exhalations are productive of 
such extended blight, corruption, and moral decay. 
I am not a stranger to the fact that I am now about venturing 
upon slippery ground, and that under some other circumstances, 
and with some other auditory, I might encounter the not well- 
regulated religious prejudice, and perhaps worse than all, that 
unfortunate bigotry and selfishness which find their full expres- 
sion now, as in. times long past, in the declaration, that “ no 
good can come out of Nazareth.” With the full hope and 
belief that, I am addressing an auditory of such enlightenment, 
liberality, and universal Christian sentiment; that however 
much any of those present may not agree with me in my sug- 
gestion, or the practicability of my plan, yet I feel confident 
any disagreement on their part with me in my mode of treating 
the evil, will not prevent them according to me an honesty of 
intention, and a meaning to best serve the interest of woman in 
the matter of preventing the crime under consideration. Have 
we any facts which prove that criminal abortion is less prac- 
tised by one or more classes of religionists than others? If yea, 
how has this exemption from the crime been secured? and may 
not others by the use of the same or like instrumentalities be 
freed from it ? 
Although the Circular of the Committee did not contain a 
question asking for the information which I am about to pre- 21 
sent, yet it was volunteered by some of those, who replied at 
length to the committee’s questions. Part of the information 
thus obtained I shall now lay before you, premising the remark, 
that I feel that, it was the sincere desire of those gentlemen who 
contributed it, that it should have its full weight and force in 
aiding the committee in developing a plan which would largely 
effect the prevention of criminal abortion. 
Dr. David Gilbert wrote: “The teaching of Holy Writ on 
this subject (criminal abortion) cann'ot be plainly and fully 
declared by all religious teachers. It is,” he continues, “ a fact 
well known to practitioners, that communing members of the 
Catholic and Israelitish churches are not guilty of this crime. 
I have,” he further continues, “ never met with a single case; 
but, on the other hand, when accidental abortion was threat- 
ened, there was manifested the most intense anxiety that the 
foetus might be saved. The inference may,” the same authority 
says, “ be fairly deduced, that whenever wilful abortion will 
be presented in its true character, as a crime, as in the case of 
the Catholic and Jew, the people thus instructed will be duly 
influenced just so far as they may be sincere in their religious 
professions.” 
Dr. J. C. remarks that “ I have a practice which embraces, I 
may say, all religionists. It has struck me as a very remark- 
able peculiarity, in the matter of abortions, that the greater 
number of those which I have attended spring up in Protestants, 
and have been the result of some wilful violence; that I have 
never treated a case in a Catholic or Hebrew which I believed 
to be wilful; and further, that while in the instance of Protest- 
ants, with scarcely an exception, requests were never made to 
prevent the abortion from being consummated : in the instances 
of the Catholics, I was implored to arrest the abortion, and 
much solicitude was manifested lest it should go on. I have 
naturally inferred, that there must be some special instruction 22 
given by the Romish and Jewish churches which has the effect 
of largely preventing the existence of the crime of abortion 
among their communicants.” 
Dr. A. S. remarks: “The work of preventing the practice of 
the crime of abortion is with ministers of the Gospel. There 
are none I know who are so correctly instructed by their minis- 
ters upon this matter as Catholic women, and I also know that 
they are very much more free from the vice of criminal abor- 
tion than other women ; and this I say, while by religious train- 
ing I am not in sympathy with those people.” 
Dr. J. M. C. says: “ I feel that I should say to you, gentle- 
men, that while I know that Protestant women practise criminal 
abortion without any apparent misgivings of its gross impro- 
priety, provided the act is anterior to ‘quickening;’ that Catho- 
lic women, or at least those I have attended, while threatened 
with abortion, have invariably been much distressed with the 
fear that they would abort, and have urged that nothing should 
be left undone to save the babe,” etc. etc. 
I might present more evidence of this character, from those 
who replied to the Circular, but I forbear, that I may call your 
attention to evidence of the same nature from another source. 
The next witness I shall call upon the stand to testify before 
you is the Rev. John Todd, D.D., a Protestant divine of Boston, 
Mass. The Rev. Doctor, feeling and yielding to the necessity, 
for the pulpit to cast the mighty weight of its influence in 
arresting criminal abortion, in the rapid strides it is making, 
wrote and published a paper on the subject, which he entitled 
“FASHIONABLE MURDER.” Dr. Todd writes: “ft is 
well known that families of children of this generation, in 
New England, do not average but three and a half each; and 
I fear this is true of the greater part of our country. I speak 
of our native population. With foreigners it is different, and 
the cause of difference will soon be mentioned.” * * * “1 23 
am sorry,” continues this learned divine, “to learn from un- 
doubted testimony, that the practice of criminal abortion is far 
more common among Protestants than Catholics. Dr. Storer 
says ‘infinitely more frequent,’ and this accounts in part, at 
least, for the much larger families of Irish Catholics.” * * * 
“ There is,” Dr. Todd continues, “ nothing in Protestantism that 
connives at it (criminal abortion), but there is vast ignorance as 
to the guilt of the thing. But in the Catholic church, human 
life is guarded at all sta'ges by the confessional, by sterrf’ de- 
nouncement, and by fearful excommunication. The rule in the 
Catholic church is unbending.” In keeping with this subject, 
the Reverend gentleman remarks: “ If it be said that I have in 
any measure exaggerated the evil and the fashion of the day, I 
reply, I would not advise any one to challenge further dis- 
closures, else we can show that France with all her Atheism, 
that Paris with all her license, is not so guilty in this respect 
as is staid New England at the present time. Facts,” says the 
Doctor, “can be adduced that will make the ears tingle. But 
we do not want to divulge them; but we do want the woman- 
hood of our day to understand that the thing can be no longer 
concealed, that commonness or fashion cannot do away with its 
awful guilt.” 
Dr. II. R. Storer observes : “ It is not of course intended to 
imply that Protestantism, as such, in any way encourages, or 
indeed permits the practice of inducing abortion: its tenets are 
uncompromisingly hostile to all crime. So great, however, is 
the popular ignorance regarding this offence, that an abstract 
morality is here comparatively powerless, our American women 
arrogate to themselves the settlement of what they consider, if 
doubtful, purely an ethical question, and there can be no doubt 
that the Romish ordinance has saved to the world many thou- 
sand infant lives. During the ten years since the preceding 
sentence was written,” says Dr. Storer, “ we have had ample 24 
vindication of its truth. Several hundreds of Protestant women 
have personally acknowledged to us their guilt, against whom, 
only seven Catholics.” 
I will not add other facts which I have at my command, hut 
will close this testimony by observing, that not one of these 
witnesses are of those, to whose exemption from the commis- 
sion of criminal abortion they have so magnanimously given 
such positive testimony. In justice to others who are not now 
so exempt, I feel called upon here to say, that the day is not 
far distant when the same good testimony will be given in their 
behalf, and that they will stand as completely disenthralled 
from the vice, as are those for whom so large an exemption is 
now claimed. 
This conclusion I base upon the fact, that the various Chris- 
tian churches of our land are awakening to the importance of 
taking very active and positive means to calling the attention 
of their folds to the extent, general practice, and enormity of 
the vice, and of imparting to them such physiological, moral, 
and religious instruction as the great necessities for the pre- 
vention of the commission of the crime demand. I feel no 
small degree of pleasure in here presenting to you, as an evi- 
dence of this awakening, the resolution presented at the Pres- 
byterian Convention (old school) held in New York in 1869. 
The resolution is broad, comprehensive, and fully speaks for 
itself. 
“Resolved, That we regard the destruction by parents of their 
own offspring, before birth, with abhorrence, as a crime against 
God, and against nature, and that as there are many influences at 
work in public and in secret, to corrupt the minds of the people, 
until the frequency of such murders is no longer sought to be con- 
cealed, we hereby warn those that are guilty of this crime that they 
cannot inherit eternal life, and that it is vile hypocrisy for such 
persons to remain in connection with the visible Church of Christ, 
and we exhort those that have been called to preach the gospel, 
and all who love purit}r and truth, and who would avert the just 25 
judgments of Almighty God from the church and nation, that they 
be no longer silent or tolerant of these things, but that they take 
a bold stand, that the floods of corruption and cruelty may be 
stayed. Referred to the Committee on Bills and Overtures.” 
I would be doing injustice to this branch of my theme, did I 
neglect to mention the positive and active part Dr. H. Cleave- 
land Cox, Episcopal Bishop of Western New York, and in 
charge of the Diocese of Central New York, has taken to call 
the attention of the ministers in his Bishopric, and through 
them their parishioners, to the crime, as he terms it, of “ ante- 
natal infanticide.” That those who have not had an opportu- 
nity of reading Bishop Cox’s Pastoral Letter of January 30, 
1869, may know how eloquently, earnestly, and positively he 
denounces the crime, and warns his people against its commis- 
sion, I present you with that portion of his letter devoted to 
this subject. “ I have,” the Bishop writes, “ heretofore warned 
my flock against the blood guiltiness of ante-natal infanticide. 
If any doubts existed heretofore of the propriety of my warn- 
ings on this subject, they must now disappear before the fact, 
that the world itself is beginning to be horrified by the practical 
results of the sacrifices to Moloch which defile our land. Again 
I warn you, that they who do such things cannot inherit eternal 
life. If there be a special damnation for those who ‘ shed inno- 
cent blood,’ what must be the portion of those who have no 
mercy upon their own flesh.” This denunciation of Bishop 
Cox has the ring of the true metal, and while it does credit to 
his heart and head, is worthy of the imitation of the most 
exalted as well as the most lowly of those, who claim to be the 
followers and servants, the teachers and exemplars of “ Him, 
who went about doing good.” 
What the Catholic Church and Jewish Church have done 
and continue to do for their people, in preventing them from 
being criminal abortionists, it is, I hold, in the power of every 26 
Christian church to do—else is its mission not a complete suc- 
cess. It matters not, for example, how the Catholic Church or 
the Israelitish Church attains the useful end, it is evident that 
it is attained. If other churches have not the same means by 
which to impart important instruction, they have means, or 
are quite competent to institute adequate means, whereby they 
may be able to impart all the needful information in regard to 
the physiology of conception, the development of the new 
being, and the fact of its having life from the moment of its 
conception, and the murderous character of the offence of 
bringing about its death and premature dislodgement from the 
womb, whether by poisonous drugs or other direct or indirect 
instrumentalities. 
All Christian ministers, of whatever sect or name, are quite 
as competent to give the required important information, rela- 
tive to conception, pregnancy, the viability of the foetus and 
the nature of the crime, of its premature dislodgement from the 
uterus, as are priests and Jewish Rabbis, and it is their duty to do 
so if such imparted information will even limitedly, much more 
if extendedly, control the commission of the crime. Whether 
the experiment will be tried by them—whether they will, in- 
dividually or collectively, through the power of their confer- 
ences, synods, and congresses devise special means for the arrest 
of the march of the crime of wilful abortion, time only can 
determine, yet so hopeful am I, that they will, that I do not 
hesitate to declare in their favor. 
The facts which have been presented to you in regard to the 
influence of proper instruction relative to conception and the 
destruction of the being “ hidden in the darkness of the womb,” 
on the part of Catholics and Israelites, are such as prove to a 
demonstration that, that which is mainly required to prevent the 
commission of criminal abortion is that intellectual, moral, and 
religious light shall be shed upon the subject in all its phases. 27 
Shall we have this light, cast upon those, who are now and have 
been too long living through a dreary night of moral and intel- 
lectual darkness, from which none more than they, will be glad- 
dened by their deliverance ? Ministers of the Gospel should 
not suS'er themselves to be liable, to the charge of neglect, to 
meet the urgent necessities which present in this matter. They 
should rival each other, in this field, so suitable for their labors, 
as they do in other fields, where their works are so successful 
for erring man, both as regards time and eternity. Will they 
do it? The answer is with themselves. The best response 
will be in the results of their labors. The work is largely 
susceptible of being successfully carried on by them. I hesi- 
tate not here to declare, that if criminal abortion shall be pre- 
vented, if indeed it shall largely be controlled, and woman 
delivered from the commission of the horrible crime of destroy- 
ing the fruit of her womb, while it is hidden in the recess of its 
darkness, she must be instructed, she must be fully educated up 
to the highest standard of morality and intelligence in every 
thing which relates to the nature of conception and pregnancy, 
and the sinful enormity of the offence, of thwarting the will 
of Almighty God, in preventing, by any means, direct or 
indirect, positive or negative, the full development of the pro- 
duct of her conception. The educating of woman up to the 
moral and intellectual standard referred to, is a work which 
might claim the attention of the wisest and the best. Such 
work successfully carried on would add glory to the most 
famous of moral and religious teachers. It is worthy of the 
heads and hearts of the most zealous of the laborers in the vast 
vineyard of the Lord. It is because of its very nature and 
objects the special work of all Christian ministers. Let me 
then, in the name of religion, purity, and woman’s elevation, 
beg, nay implore, all Christian ministers, to organize and make 
systematic preparations for a well-concerted attack upon the 28 
front and flank of the abomination, and never, never to cease’ 
the employment of all their intellectual, moral, and religious 
instrumentalities until success shall have crowned their efforts, 
and woman shall stand in glorious grandeur disenthralled from 
the great vice of our day, the murder of unborn babes. 
Touching the subject of criminal abortion, as it does in many 
of its important aspects, I cannot withhold my desire to transfer 
to my pages and of submitting to your thoughtful consideration 
part of the letter of the late Catholic Bishop of Boston, Bishop 
Fitzpatrick. This letter was addressed to Dr. Horatio R. 
Storer, and was written in reply to inquiries made by the 
learned Doctor in regard to the teachings of the Catholic 
Church relative to “ the destruction of the human foetus.”1 
“ The doctrine of the Catholic Church,” remarked Bishop Fitz- 
patrick, “ her canons, her pontifical constitutions, her theologians, 
without exception, teach, and constantly have taught, that the 
destruction of the human foetus in the womb of the mother, at any 
period from the first instant of conception, is a heinous crime, equal 
at least in guilt, to that of murder. We find it con- 
demned as such even as far back as the time of Tertullian (at the 
end of the second century), who calls it festinatio homicidii, a 
hastening of murder. The Pope, Sextus the Fifth, in a bull pub- 
lished in 1588, subjects those guilty of the crime to all the penalties, 
civil and ecclesiastical, inflicted on murderers. It is denounced and 
reprobated in many of the canons of the church. 
“ The reason of this doctrine (apart from the authority of the 
church) must, it seems to me, appear evident upon a little reflec- 
tion. The very instant conception has taken place, there lies the 
vital germ of a man. True, it is hidden in the darkness of the 
womb, and in it is helpless, but it has sacred rights, founded in 
God’s law, so much the more to be respected because it is helpless. 
It may be already a living man, for neither mother nor physician 
can tell when life is infused; they can only tell when its presence 
is manifested, and there is a wide difference between these two 
things. At any rate, it is from the first moment potentially and 
1 Criminal Abortion: its Nature, its Evidence, and its Laws. By H. R. 
Storer, M. D., LL. D., and Franklin Fiske Heard, p. 71. 29 
jn radice a man with a body and a soul destined most surely, by 
the will of the Creator and his law, to be developed into the fulness 
of human existence. No one can prevent that development without 
resisting and annulling one of the most sacred and important laws 
established by the Divine Author of the Universe; and he is a 
criminal, a murderer, who deals an exterminating blow to that 
incipient man and drives back into nothingness a being to whom 
God designed to give a living body and an immortal soul. 
“ From this it follows that the young woman whose virtue has 
proved an insufficient guardian to her honor, when she seeks by 
abortion to save in the eyes of man that honor she has forfeited, 
incurs the additional and deeper guilt of murder in the eyes of God, 
the Judge of the living and the dead. Who can express what fol- 
lows with regard to those women who, finding themselves lawfully 
mothers, prefer to devastate with poison or with steel their wombs, 
rather than bear the discomforts attached to the privilege of ma- 
ternity, rather than forego the gayeties of a winter’s balls, parties, 
and plays, or the pleasures of a summer’s trips and amusements ? 
“But abortion,” the Bishop continued, “ besides being a direct 
crime against a positive law of God, is also an indirect crime against 
society. Admit its practice, and you throw open a way for the 
most unbridled licentiousness ; you make woman a mere instrument 
of beastl}* lust.” 
You ask, perhaps, would I not have other means, than those 
dwelt upon to prevent criminal abortion, instituted ? I answer, 
I would have the power of the Legislature, the courts, and all 
legal instrumentalities enlisted in the good work of crushing 
out the accursed crime. I would make it the duty of the Phila- 
delphia County Medical Society to institute a committee, whose 
duty it should be to wait upon a few legal gentlemen of this 
city, men of great wisdom ad jurists, whose public spirit would 
not allow them to hesitate in giving all aid within their reach 
to crush out the crime—with such legal gentlemen I am happy 
to say our city abounds—I would have the committee to confer 
with such gentlemen and lay before them all the facts as regards 
the how, the where, and by whom abortions are practised, and 
what are the varied instrumentalities used in the commission of 
the horrible crime. How the whereabouts of those infamous 30 
wretches are to be discovered; the channels through which pass 
the ready and eagerly looked for information of how and where 
the act may be produced ; the baneful effects of the poisonous 
compounds of pills and mixtures advertised so cunningly, yet 
so meanly, in some of our daily papers. To inform these legal 
gentlemen of the quality and kind of evidence which physicians 
could present to fix the guilt upon abortionists, of their com- 
mission of the crime, and, in short, to present all information 
within their reach to enable them to draft an act which should 
be so perfect in its construction, and so complete a legal net - 
work, as would defy even the smallest of these criminals passing 
through its meshes. Such an act presented to our Legislature, 
and properly backed up by the influence of the various Christian 
churches and the medical profession, would readily be enacted 
into a law. Then would our courts find easy that which they 
now for want of law find almost impossible—the conviction of 
the abortionists, male and female, learned and ignorant, profes- 
sional and unprofessional, who now are steeped to the lips in 
crime, and upon whose hands is the stain of the blood of so 
many murdered innocents. 
Thanking you in all sincerity for your kind indulgence and 
patient attention, I beg to say, as I hope you will believe, that 
in presenting to you the matter which I have spread before 
you this evening, I have had in view only the presentation 
of criminal abortion as it is—the suggesting a remedy or 
more for its cure and prevention. If, in the discharge of this 
duty and in redeeming the promise referred to early in the 
evening, I have, because of the facts, been compelled to present 
woman not robed in all her charms and radiant with all her 
virtues and loveliness, as would indeed have been a pleasant 
task, yet with all I assure you in truth that I have 
“ Nothing extenuated, 
Nor set down aught in malice,” 31 
but have tried to tell “ a plain unvarnished tale.” It is, in part, 
because I would have woman pure and undefiled, that I have 
raised my feeble voice and added my weak words to those that 
have so often been called into requisition for her elevation 
upon so many previous occasions, here and elsewhere. Esti- 
mating highly, as I do, woman’s interests as a Christian, ac- 
countable to God and the community for her transgressions of 
Divine and statutory law, I have not dragged criminal abor- 
tion before you for the purpose of calling down odium upon 
woman—to invite contumely and contempt to be cast upon 
her. No, no, far from it. I have been actuated and influ- 
enced by the desire to serve her by suggesting means pro- 
ductive of her special intellectual enlightenment, moral puri- 
fication, and disenthralment from a most disgusting and fast 
increasing mortal sin. In the furtherance of this work I beg 
and implore most respectfully, my hearers, your efficient aid. 
My aim has been to present in its truthful characters, no matter 
how disgusting they are, a crime not only of great magnitude 
as regards its enormity, but one of vast and almost immeasurable 
proportions, because of the almost universality of its practice ; 
a crime by no means, as we have seen, confined to the degraded 
classes of society, but practised, and cherished alike by the 
genteel and the meretricious, paint-bedaubed, and gew-gaw 
bedecked brazen daughters of sin, who, in the public highways 
boldly ply their art, and who dwell in homes which have not 
been inaptly styled “ the vestibules of hell.” 
The commission of this crime is not confined to the harlot, as 
we have seen, but finds in sadness and shame it must be said a 
large, nay the larger proportion of its devotees among the 
refined, the learned, the higher classes, while the poor and the 
lowly are not strangers to its enormity, nor free from its com- 
mission. I use no honeyed words—I but utter the truth, and 
if by such utterance I offend the sensibilities of the over- 32 
sensitive, I regret it; but I cannot, I will not stop to soften 
sentences or modify truths when I am contending with an evil 
of such gigantic proportions as criminal abortion, and which, 
for its destruction, demands all and more than that which I 
have suggested. 
In this work I desire to be regarded as the friend of woman, 
assuring her, as I do, that it is our enemies who conceal from 
us a knowledge of our faults, not desiring our improvement— 
while it is our friends who inform us of our errors, and teach 
us how, and invite us to avoid them. In such relationship do 
I desire to stand to erring woman. So far from being pleased 
to behold her stained and spotted with crimes, be they ever so 
small, I would have her as pure and as white, because of her 
freedom from vice, as was Eve, when she, in full exemption from 
sin, dwelt in perfect purity and surpassing beauty in the garden 
of Eden. 
“Not the nymph who met old Nnma, 
In his hallowed walks, and whispered 
In his ears her strains divine, 
Would I conceive beyond her— 
The very shrine and sacristy of human virtue.”