[From the Boston Medical and Surgical Journal for November 1, 1866.] “WHY NOT? A BOOK FOR EVERY WOMAN.” A WOMAN’S VIEW.[46] The light in which a subject presents itself depends very much upon the standpoint from which we view it. Dr. Storer’s arguments and statements are earnest, conscientious and powerful; but women, the chief players in this tragedy of life, feel that while the facts are in possession of medical men, their motives are not so well known and appreciated. Often they are of such a character as may not be repeated, even to the long-tried and trusted physician; for there are certain things of too painfully delicate a nature for woman’s lips to utter to a masculine ear, while to a sister sympathizer, perhaps, the whole story is freely poured out. Abortion is fearfully frequent, even more so than Dr. Storer has assumed, and is rapidly increasing. One great reason of the aversion to child-bearing is the thousand disagreeable and painful experiences which attend the long months of patient waiting, and the certain agony at the end—agony which is akin to nothing else on earth—agony which the tenderest susceptibilities and sympathies of the noblest physician can but faintly imagine—agony which, in not one case in a hundred, is mitigated by anæsthesia. If the blessed, benevolent suggestion of the general use of chloroform could be adopted, the world would hear less of abortions. The thousand times reiterated fact, that “it is a woman’s _duty_ to suffer this,” and that it is “the end to which she was created,” is but sorry comfort in the hour of her anguish, and such injunctions will, of themselves, never work reformation. It is a suggestive fact that it is not young wives, but mothers, who most frequently procure abortion; women of mature years, who know what they are doing, and the danger before them. That they are guilty of taking life is not generally understood (that there is life actually existing at the time the bud is blighted), but that the essential principle, which, under favoring circumstances, might at some distant day produce life, is removed. It is not strange that women of delicate organization shrink from suffering, and perhaps grow cowardly in the face of duty. Many is the intelligent woman, noble in all else, who says, consciously and deliberately, “I would rather die than pass through that agony again;” and, in such a frame of mind, how long would the prospect of feeble health at some distant day, weigh with the prospect of immediate suffering, almost, or quite to death? I do not say she is right. I only say she needs something else than censure.