PART VI.
The Rights of Offspring.
Children have the right to be born! Alas, that this God-given privilege should ever be called in question! That it is so, however, the testimony of modern physicians, the daily records of the newspapers, the fulminations from the pulpit, the remonstrances of philanthropists, and the forebodings of philosophers abundantly prove.
If we examine the history of abortion, we shall find that this crime, now so commonly practiced as to demand the attention it is receiving from moralists, is of extremely ancient origin, having existed among pagan nations from the earliest times; that the influence of Christianity has ever been to banish the practice, and that in proportion as Christianity becomes weakened or destroyed, the fearful evil in question re-appears and extends.
The Roman women did not scruple to disembarrass themselves of a pregnancy which might interfere with their convenience or pleasure, until Ulpian repressed the practice by attaching to it the most severe penalties. Plato and Aristotle advocated it for the avowed purpose of preventing excessive population, and taught that the child only acquires a soul at the moment of mature birth; hence, that the embryo not possessing animation, its sacrifice is not
murder. This monstrous heresy against religion, science, and common sense is not without its imitators in our own time. Modern sophists pretend that before a certain period of intra-uterine existence, which they term "animation," the embryo has neither life nor soul; that, consequently, its
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