CRIMINAL ABORTION OR FETICIDE.

I have so far endeavored to give a cursory description of avoidable causes, which were inadvertantly or thoughtlessly encouraged, and it is to be hoped that my friendly reproof and counsel will incite my readers to modify their pernicious habits and direct the currents of their thoughts into channels more or less in harmony with the hygiene that I have been at liberty to suggest.

There are few persons, if any, who would voluntarily act and think in a manner that would be prejudicial to their physical or moral welfare, if they were educated to a standard of knowledge that gave them an insight into the evil consequences. The law of self-preservation is innate in our natures, so that we are ready to cultivate the good and useful and shun that which may do harm.

Among the avoidable causes there is none so prolific of disease as that which is traced to the premature expulsion of the ovum or fetus from the mother’s womb.

This appears self-evident, when we stop to consider that the function of reproduction is at once by far the most complicated of the physiological processes of the female economy, so that its sudden interruption will naturally induce any one or all of the physical or pelvic ailments which we are called upon to discuss.

For our purpose it will not be sufficient to consider the subject from a medical standpoint alone, because the thoughts drift involuntarily, as it were, from the physical into the metaphysical, from the material into the spiritual part of our nature.

It is not within the scope of this work to enter upon an inquiry into the scientific evidence of the existence of the soul or advance any argument whatever in support of that doctrine, but I assume the existence of an immortal soul to be a fact.

What I will endeavor to explain is when and where this mystic union of the soul with the body takes place? Here the speculations of the medical philosophers have been contradictory, on account of attributing to the fetus different kinds of life, that is, an organic or vegetating existence attached to the mother’s womb, and as such not possessed of sentient principle, until the real or spiritual life imbues the fetus, when it becomes a living soul.

Hippocrates, the most famous physician of antiquity, who, even in the light of the nineteenth century, looms up as one of the most brilliant intellects that the world ever had, lent the weight of his judgment to this very unreasonable doctrine.

He supposed that animation occurred from thirty to forty-two days after conception.

The Stoics went still further and maintained that there was no vitality until after birth and the establishment of respiration.

The Academicians were of the opinion, that life was imparted to the fetus during the period in which the mother carried it in the womb, but they could not agree on the time when it began. Even the Roman Church, which, in the main, is right on this question, speaks of animate and inanimate fetuses. When it is remembered that there was no scientific physiology upon which the ancients based their opinions, it is not at all surprising that, in the light of modern research, they are shown to be all wrong.

There is no time during the child’s sojourn in the mother’s womb that life is less active than at another, and any opinion to the contrary is manifestly absurd and unscientific.

I appreciate the distinction between physical life, or vital activity, and spiritual life, but the one must necessarily be in the other.

A central fountain of physical force is consistent with scientific deductions, and physicists are inclined to admit such a source. Many of the phenomena of the material world are explained upon this hypothesis. The sun is supposed to be that central fountain of physical force which inspires activity in matter on this planet. Matter in itself is inert and motionless; the globe we inhabit has no energy in itself which could keep it in motion, but the forces playing on and around it impart to it its motive power.

The life of any complex organism, such as that of man, is in fact the aggregate of the vital activity of all its component parts, and each elementary part of the fabric has its own independent power of growth and development. If we contemplate the history of the life of a plant, we perceive that it grows from a germ or seed to a fabric, sometimes of gigantic size,—it multiplies its species, by the production of germs similar to that from which it originated. This it performs without feeling or thinking or any effort of its own. All the functions of which its life is composed are grouped together under the general designation of organic functions, or vegetative life.

In the building up of the animal structure we have precisely the same operations taking place, one minute cell added to the other, like the stone mason running up a brick wall, each brick representing a cell, until the structure is completed.

The question that we are particularly interested in is whether this “animal life” which stimulates the growth of the fetus from its first inception, can be any the less sacred at one time than at another?

There is a general impression among a large portion of the community that the fetus first becomes endowed with life at the period of quickening, which is between the fourth and fifth month of pregnancy. The time when the mother first feels the motion is considered the period when the child becomes animated, that is, when it receives its spiritual nature into union with its human nature.

The English law recognized the truth of this infamous doctrine, in varying the punishment of an attempt to procure abortion according to whether the woman be “quick with child or not,” and in delaying execution when a woman can be proved to be so, though the execution is made to proceed, if she be not “quick,” even if she be unquestionably pregnant. This was a most barbarous penal provision and hardly excusable in a savage nation, much less among a Christian people, because it is contrary to all fact, to all analogy, to reason, and at variance with biological science.

If the embryo or fetus is simply an animal growing in the mother’s womb, until the period of quickening or birth, it would not be a crime to procure an abortion, at any time, before these events take place. No sacrifice of a human life would be involved, so that the act would be simply a “misdemeanor” regulated by the degree of injury which the mother sustained as a result of the operation. This was the prevailing opinion for many centuries, until, in the year 692, the Roman Empire so amended its law that the procuring of an abortion at any time during the period of gestation was homicide, murder, to be punished with death.

France patterned after the Roman law for a time and made criminal abortion punishable by inflicting the death penalty; during the French revolution this law was amended by imprisonment for life; and later, under Napoleon, in 1810, the law was again changed, and the punishment lessened.

In England there has been a gradually growing moral sentiment to protect the defenseless child in its mother’s womb, so that to-day England has so amended her law that the fetus has the same protection in the uterus before as after quickening, so that a conviction for the procurement of criminal abortion at any time during gestation from conception until birth is felony and punished by imprisonment or transportation.

In Germany the law makes abortion a State prison offense, and public opinion is in such a healthy state there that anyone justly accused of this crime is quite sure to meet with a punishment.

In America legislation on this subject differs widely in the different States. In Massachusetts the barbarous distinction, “before quickening and after,” was still recognized a few years ago, so that the crime of abortion before quickening was not an indictable offense. In some of the States the laws are stringent and conform with the physiological facts of fetal life, but, like most of our “good laws,” they are. observed only in the breach.

The essential peculiarity in the process of reproduction is the absorption of a small cell of the male, the spermatozoon, by another small cell of the female, the ovum. This coalescence of the two, male and female cells, is the fertilization of the ovum, and constitutes conception.

The spermatic fluid of the male holds in suspension a large number of very small bodies, or cells, which, from their usually remaining in active motion for some time after they have quitted the human body, have been erroneously considered animalcules. A more thorough familiarity with these bodies, and careful microscopic examinations, can distinguish nothing in the nature of structure within them. They are simply little oval, flattened, transparent cells between the one-six-hundredth and one-eight-hundredth of an inch in length, having a little thread-like “tail,” gradually tapering to a fine point.

These measurements make the spermatozoa considerably larger than the average red blood-corpuscle, which is one-thirty-two-hundredths of an inch in diameter.

The spermatic fluid of a single emission of a healthy male contains thousands of these little ciliated cells, the cilia or tails of which are seen in an active vibratile undulatory motion, in the field of the microscope, wriggling hither and thither, like a school of frightened fishes. This lashing motion is continued for hours, and under favorable circumstances for days. In the cases of microscopical examinations of vaginal secretions of married women, for causes of sterility, I was able to establish their activity thirty-six hours after marital relations.

Through this peculiar lashing motion the ciliated cells are propelled onward and upward, through the mouth and cervix of the womb, thence along its body to the openings of the Fallopian tubes, along which they migrate to the ovaries of the female. In a healthy condition of the female generative organs, hundreds of spermatozoa arrive at the ovaries about the same time, a few hours or days after copulation, but as the ova ripen and are discharged only at regular intervals, the hundreds of ciliated bodies that travel thither are doomed to disappointment, and gradually lose their vitality, and perhaps are removed by absorption.

Of all these hundreds of germs it requires only a single one to combine with an ovum, or a similar little cell of the female, to constitute conception. When this combination has been accomplished, a new being is inaugurated, another human soul is started out, by the magic wand of nature, to go through the different spheres of evolution, of whose ultimatum we can have no clear conception, but this is perfectly clear, that after this coalescence of the two germs, the die is cast and the female becomes then only the vehicle in which the creative forces are effecting their elaboration.

Coition and conception are widely different processes, and require to be separately analyzed to be understood.

Coition is always a physical act, a gratification of the senses, and, like many other human passions, is often abused by excessive indulgence, degenerating into lust.

Conception, on the other hand, is purely passive, an organic function, without consciousness on the part of the female.

Thus far there is a similarity in the organic processes of conception in all mammalia, so that their embryos cannot be classified and assigned to their respective species in the early stages of their development. Physiologists are unable to say whether the one belongs to and will ultimately develop into a brute animal or a human being, yet one has the attributes of mental force, the elements of a soul, while the other is to follow a blind instinct, without the possibility of spiritual perception. Conception, in the one case, is simply a vegetative or organic function, while in the other there is, in addition, a spiritual effort to individualize a human soul.

The creative energy of nature is separate and independent of the sexual act, for it does not take place during copulation of the sexes, nor immediately after it, but hours or days after the act is accomplished.

I am often called upon to say when and where the human soul becomes associated with the human body?

There is a divine life, or spiritual energy, that animates the soul from the spiritual realm. It is the correspondency of the physical force that animates the physical body.

The term or phrase which I employ to designate this force is of less importance than the definition which is given to it, and upon this, of course, we must agree. I recognize in such an energy or power, the primal cause or force, behind and beyond the phenomena of nature. This force must be universal and omnipresent, hence spiritual; it must be the central source of supply for all spiritual things, so that the doctrine of Paul is scientifically in harmony with a rationalistic view of the subject, when he says “in Him we live and move and have our being.”

The science of the conservation of forces teaches, that forces are never lost, that they are indestructible and eternal. We derive our spiritual existence from this central spiritual sun and inherit the quality of eternity with it. Mind is spirit and the soul is mind; this is the view of Spinoza, who, in the second part of his work “Ethics,” employs the terms synonymously throughout the chapter “Of the Nature and Origin of the Mind or Soul.” Mind differentiates man from the inferior animal creations, and can make him what he will.

Professor Carpenter in his “Principles of Human Physiology,” tells us, that when we first discern the primordial cell, which is to evolve itself into the human organism, we can trace nothing that essentially distinguishes it from that which might give origin to any other form of organic structure. The earliest stages of its development consist in simple multiplication of cells by “duplicative subdivision,” so that a mass of cells comes to be produced, amidst the several components, of which no difference can be traced; and this also finds its parallel among the simpler organisms of both kingdoms. There is nothing at this period to distinguish the germs of man from that of any other vertebrated animal, yet in the course of nine short months a human being is developed possessing all the faculties of its progenitor, and how could all this come to pass, if not instituted at the moment of conception?

It is at this time and moment, that an atom of the universal spirit becomes separated and individualized, and the germ of a human soul is implanted, deep in the dark recesses of nature’s laboratory. The ovum of the female and the germ of the male coalesce, imbued by the incarnation of the immortal spirit, and no time can be more opportune for that union than at the very inception of our being, because the soul and the body must interact, one on the other.

In the reproduction of man, there is a higher purpose than simply to multiply the species. The Creator can only manifest Himself, if he has intelligent souls or spirits as his creatures, and the reproduction of the human species is the natural means of bringing this about.

The mystic union is accomplished at the time and moment of conception, when a unit of the universal spirit becomes individualized into a human soul. In the dark recesses of the mother’s womb the ovum of the female and the germ of the male, imbued by the immortal spirit, begin their growth and development together, this constitutes the triune of nature, from which the evolutions of body and soul take their beginning.

Sexual instinct is not an unholy and depraved action of the human mind, but the necessary means to an end, a finite instrumentality of the Divine mind to procreate the body, as an abode for the human soul. One of the attributes of the Creator is, in the very nature of things, to create, and he has thus endowed us, His creatures, for the manifestation of His creative power. He perpetually and eternally creates, and this has no reference to time, place or space: just as in the beginning, God created all things, so we recognize the supreme hand, now, to-day, and forever, ever active in His natural element.

The operation of nature’s law may be contravened by the selfish, sordid, criminal acts of the human heart, but it cannot be frustrated. No one can console himself, that the invincible law of evolution is at the capricious behest of finite man, and can be neutralized and obstructed at will; that would place a limitation on the Creator; it would contradict the omnipotence of the Divine mind; it would place every life or soul at the mercy of the sordid conscienceless abortionist, and it would reduce the Divine origin of man and the soul’s immortality to an absurdity.

After the fetus is murdered, its soul continues to grow in the spiritual realm, an undying witness of the criminal infamy which deprived it of that earthly experience which nature intended for the children of men. It is the greatest crime against nature to kill off a human fetus, and prematurely hurl into eternity a human soul, which has the same right to human experience as those already born, and, in the eyes of God, it is no less a crime than the murder of an adult.

“Dust thou art, to dust returnest,
Was not spoken of the soul.”

The meaning of the term abortion is etymologically not to be born or not to be carried out, or, in other words, the premature expulsion of the fetus from its mother’s womb, which is any time before it is capable of independent existence. This is according to the construction of the law of France, which means any time previous to the termination of the sixth month of pregnancy. Abortion may be accidental, that is, it may be due to a casualty which was entirely beyond the control of the person suffering or going through an abortion, or it may be due to disease affecting either the embryo or the mother.

The word “miscarriage” is generally preferred to that of “abortion” under the misconception that only the latter implies criminal culpability; this, of course, is an error, because each word means exactly the same thing, with this difference, that one is of Latin origin, while the other is a plain Anglo-Saxon term. An abortion that is brought about, from other than natural causes, for the deliberate and avowed purpose of escaping from the inconvenience, privation, and cares of maternity, is always qualified by the adjective criminal.

In the early months of pregnancy, it very seldom, though it occasionally does happen, that complications arise which place the life of the mother in imminent danger; that the embryo shares this danger in a corresponding degree is self-evident, because the fetus is unable to live independently of the mother any time before the expiration of the sixth month of gestation, so that the death of the mother means death to the fetus also.

Through a fall, heavy lifting, or a sudden jar, a partial detachment is liable to occur between the placenta of the fetus and the wall of the mother’s womb, that being the place where the blood of the one is exchanged into the blood of the other; from this, a hemorrhage may result, which will not yield to rest nor to other means which experience has taught to be useful. This loss of blood may be so great that, if it continues, the life of both will be sacrificed.

In some women pregnancy may become complicated with convulsions; these may be so violent, and recur so often, as to threaten life, and they are obstinate to all medicinal resources.

Contingencies of the above nature evoked the scientific inquiry, whether abortions are ever justifiable. The answer must invariably be, that when it is clearly seen that the mother will surely die, and her fetus with her, an induced abortion becomes a justifiable obstetric resource, and under these circumstances it is not a crime nor even a sacrifice of the embryo, which would have perished with the mother.

This rule of practice has been endorsed by the very highest authority in obstetric science, and the competent conscientious physician will readily draw the line between cases where so radical a measure becomes necessary, and where milder conservative measures will save the life of both mother and child.

This cannot be a license for crime, except that the sordidly depraved time server may often try to stretch the threatening danger, but when this is done it is no less a crime of murder in the eyes of God, than if he had premeditatedly and willfully slain a fellow-being.

Such persons would not shrink from the perpetration of any crime, be it ever so heinous and black. These wretches are too cowardly to thrust a poniard into their victims on the highway, but ever ready to operate in secrecy in the abortion chamber, which is hidden from the eyes of man. I have known abortions being sought and abortions being committed, upon the flimsy pretext of being too weak, or too sick at the stomach. These are shallow subterfuges, that should not be countenanced by any conscientious practitioner.

Many reasons are either imaginary or pretended, and I have often proved the fallacy of pretensions of an inability to carry a child, after women had gone through the abortion mills, by persuading them to become reconciled, for the time being, and that I would see them through to a happy end, and in no case were their fears justified by subsequent developments. There is a great deal in controlling the minds of these women, and directing them into wholesome channels of thought, and after that they become much happier and contented than ever before in their married lives.

If the proposition is generally accepted, that abortions are justifiable as a therapeutical expedient, you open the door to the criminally inclined. Wily women will impose upon inexperienced practitioners by feigning physical suffering as a result of pregnancy, for the purpose of getting rid of their fetuses. There is a certain amount of hardship and discomfort associated with the average pregnancy for a part of the period at least, but this should be suffered with a mother’s fortitude.

The testimony of the early canons of the Catholic Church is very decisive on the crime of abortion, namely, “that the destruction of the fetus in the womb of its parent, at any period from the first moment of conception, is a crime equal in turpitude to murder.”

In Protestant countries abortions are on the increase, and in America it is one of the crying crimes of society, which has so thoroughly tainted and defiled the moral sense of American communities, that it has become next to impossible to get a jury of twelve men who will agree on a verdict to punish this dastardly foul crime of murder, and the abortionist is thus encouraged in his iniquitous vocation.

Professor J. Taber Johnson, of Maryland, stated in his annual oration before the State Medical Society: “The difficulty of conviction for producing abortion is shown in the statement of the Attorney-General of Massachusetts, that of thirty-two arrests and trials of abortionists in that State, in a period of eight years, not a single conviction resulted; and this fact is equally true of other States.” This is indeed a sad commentary on the jury system, which often degenerates into a farce or travesty on justice.

The practice of abortion is on the increase. This is not due to a single cause, but to a number, operating separately or co-operating jointly to the same end. Boarding-house or hotel life exercises a pernicious influence on the habits and morals of women. They sit all day in their apartments with indifferent occupations, or walk the streets between meal hours, without the inspiring thoughts which a cozy home alone can inspire. The maternal instinct languishes or dies completely out, and if women become pregnant while transiently domiciled, they scruple not against committing this great crime, because their surroundings and accommodations may not be suitable for the changed relations which motherhood brings about. If these people had their own little homes, were they ever so humble, their minds would run in different grooves, their lives would be much happier and offspring longingly desired, to fill the nooks in the little household.

Want of domestic training in childhood lays the foundation for this crime. The American girl is trained with a view to display so-called refined accomplishments. This is done by totally ignoring domestic duties; these are to be shunned as menial and degrading; and when girls grow into womanhood and are married, they naturally look upon the ordinary household duties as drudgery, and quite unbecoming a woman of their attainments. There is nothing in their bosoms to arouse a pride in their homes; quite the reverse; that principle has never been inculcated in their youth, so that it is quite natural, that they hie to a boarding-house; here they patronize the abortionist, or acquire proficiency in that art themselves, from lack of nobler occupation.

Changed relations of the sexes destroy the maternal instinct. A man in a man’s place, and a woman in the sphere for which God and nature intended her, is for the best interests of society. There is useful and profitable work for everyone, but each should labor in his or her respective field of natural adaptability, in which there is plenty to do. There is, in the very nature of things, never anything gained by a woman doing a man’s work, because there are always plenty of men around to do that, but while a woman is doing a man’s work, she is necessarily neglecting a woman’s, which it is physically impossible for any man to do for her. There is, consequently, an irretrievable loss to society from misapplied labor. When the great Napoleon was asked by Madam de Stael whom he considered the greatest woman in France, his curt reply was, “She who bore the largest number of children.” This is a tribute to motherhood, which no one can ridicule, for whom should we honor and respect more than the faithful, loving mother, who makes her life subservient to that of her children? There is no comparison between the self-denial of parental devotion and the devotee to amusements and fashion, or the slothful wife, who imposes sterility upon herself for the sake of pandering to depraved appetites and frivolous pleasures.

Depraved associates pave the way to feticide. Some married women are so brazen and callous, that they have no delicacy in narrating their exploits of child murder with a triumphant air, whenever their acquaintances are patient and foolish enough to listen to them. These gadding persons often contaminate the minds of newly-married women, who had never for a moment entertained the thought of such an awful crime, and who would have made happy and contented mothers, were it not for the seeds of discontent and crime which were sown in their early matrimonial career. I have known mothers who had lost the delicate maternal instincts, without which a mother becomes a monster, advise their daughters and encourage them in the perpetration of this crime.

Women of this type should be avoided like the dreaded mancanilla tree, for they poison the body and soul of pure, virtuous women, with whom they come in close contact; they should be shunned by the young housewife like a pestilence, because their hands are scarlet with the blood of their own children.

Unprincipled physicians are too often instrumental in abetting criminal abortions, and this for two reasons, namely, for the immediate lucre which is to them in hand paid, and also for ingratiating themselves into the confidence of their patrons, so that they may become their physician in other ailments. These are the pariahs of the profession, but, viewed from a business standpoint, they are very successful. It is through the looseness with which medical colleges are conducted in this country, many of them not deserving the name of college, but more properly denominated a rendezvous of self-constituted professors and ingenious advertising sharps, that the ranks of the profession are overcrowded, because there is no scrutiny of moral character or professional attainments. These once labeled M. D.’s are determined to make a professional living, and nothing deters them from becoming particeps criminis, but owing to the corrupt and depraved jury system such a thing as punishing a physician for feticide is hardly ever heard of. I would advise my readers to shun each and every one of these criminal monsters as they would a pestilence. In general, “female specialist” is but another name for abortionist, for the great majority of these self-constituted specialists do not know the rudiments of the science of gynecology; and women should exercise great precaution in whose hands they place themselves, or, rather, their lives. I know of no calling that is capable of rendering more good to humanity than the profession which I have made my own.

The honorable physician occupies a position where he can do a great deal to improve the tone and morality of the community. He can do more than the pulpit in preventing feticide, because he can depict the physical dangers and the moral turpitude, for it is to him that the deluded woman first goes for advice. It is with him to become an oracle of heaven; in the great majority of instances he can be instrumental in saving human life and prevent the mother from murdering her own child.

Maternity is the function of Divinity in human nature. Who can look upon a newly-born babe without seeing something truly Divine, a manifestation of the Divine mind to create in his image, through the instrumentality of man, an innocent human flower, planted upon this earth to enjoy the fullness thereof, and what miscreant shall deny it its inheritance?

That husbands are often the instigators of this crime is a fact well known to every physician of experience. I have known of a number of cases where wives came to my office with a woeful tale of discontent on the part of their husbands, who did not want an “increase.” Such men are not worthy the name of father or husband. They should have been emasculated before they ever approached the marriage altar, for they are below the brute creation and have no claim on human affections. The luxuries of life should not be considered as weighing against the birth of children, nor the expense of maintaining a large family considered as an excuse for feticide; expenses had better be reduced and economized in other directions, so as to meet the little extra increase, which the little stranger may cause. It is a fact, that among thrifty people, large families are no barrier to material success, for the blessedness of heaven rests upon them.

I invariably solicit an interview with the recalcitrant spouse, and take the opportunity to tell him of the responsibilities which married life imposes upon married couples; that the simple gratification of the carnal senses is lust, which can and should be controlled by every person, and more in particular by married men. Matrimonial relations based only on libidinous pleasure are transient and evanescent; incompatabilities arise, which cause conflict and dissension, ultimating in estrangement and divorces, but when soul is wedded to soul, then they are in harmony with the music of the spheres, and children constitute the cement of an eternal wedlock which no man can rend asunder.

Abrupt termination of pregnancy constitutes in itself a diseased process in the tissues of the womb. We have already learned of the gradual growth of the body of the womb to accommodate the growth of the child; when abortion takes place there is a sudden check to this growth in the tissues of the womb, and a low grade of inflammation invades the entire structure. This inflammatory process fixes or hardens the womb so that this acquired enlargement often becomes permanent. The result is, that women can often trace the beginning of a long series of complaints and a shattered constitution to a so-called miscarriage. For this reason, the after-treatment of an abortion is of much greater importance, than after a regular normal delivery.

After the close of a natural gestation, the child is born, and nature immediately sets to work to restore the womb to its healthy normal size. No violence having been done to the organ, there is no extra effort necessary on the part of nature to restore it. In a premature expulsion of the fetus, it is altogether different, the cell growth and the necessary physiological action to build up the womb, to house the rapidly-developing fetus, was suddenly interfered with, and the shock which the vital activity sustains, diverts their energies into a diseased process. Inflammation is to be guarded against, for it constitutes the root of all pathological conditions; chief among them is its prevention of fatty degeneration and absorption of the superfluous tissues of the organ, so that the womb remains heavy and enlarged. This entails a series of consequences; its size and weight may force it to occupy an unnatural and painful position, such as a falling of the womb or procidentia, or it may turn or even bend on itself into abnormal positions, called versions and flexions; these become obstinate to treatment in proportion to the time which elapses from the occurrence of the disease to the time when they fall under proper treatment.

Inflammations are limited sometimes to only portions of the organ; this may be to the lining mucous membrane of either the body or neck. It may also invade the entire organ and even extend to the neighboring tissues and ligaments. From the uterus along the Fallopian tubes to the ovaries inflammation may spread itself, causing abscesses in its wake and other complications which may require surgical skill of a special nature to give permanent relief.

Sterility is often the result of disease caused by abortion, and this should be another warning to thoughtless, giddy women, who desire no children in their early married life, because it would interfere with their regular pleasure rounds, and so resort to abortions, which will, in all probability, make them entirely unfit to ever become pregnant or bear children. I have made an attempt to impress on the reader two things; one of these is the flagrant violation of ordinary and simple rules of health, the other the enormity of the crime of induced abortions, and to accomplish this I have avoided screening the subject by employing ambiguous or finely-selected phrases, but have used plain terms which will not shock the pure or noble in heart and mind, but may the hypocritical, under the gauze of a false modesty.