Women -- Suffrage -- History; Women -- Suffrage -- United States -- History; Women's rights -- History; Women's rights -- United States -- History
The formation of the New York Society for Sanitary and Moral
Prophylaxis marked an important era. For the first time the
physicians as a whole assumed a social duty to promote purity.
They had done it as individuals, but this was the first instance
of their banding themselves together on a moral as well as a
sanitary plane to enlighten the public as to the causes of social
disease.... Dr. Prince Morrow should be everlastingly honored by
every woman.... I consider no woman guiltless, whether she lives
in a suffrage State or not, if she does not hold herself
responsible for guarding less fortunate women. Corrupt custom has
rent the sacred, seamless robe of womanhood and cast out part of
the women, abandoning them to degradation. We must learn to
recognize the responsibility of pure women for the fallen women,
of the woman whose circumstances have enabled her to stand, for
the woman whom adverse conditions have borne down. We should
oppose the sacrifice of womanhood, whether of an innocent girl
sacrificed with pomp and ceremony in church, or of a poor waif in
the street; and the great protection is the ability of young
girls to earn their living by congenial labor. All the social
purity societies do not equal the trade schools as a
preventive....
We must not look at this matter from only one point of view or
say that we can do nothing about it until we are armed with the
ballot. I am a suffragist but not "high church," I am a
suffragist and something else. We ought to have the ballot, we
are at a disadvantage in our work while we are deprived of it,
but even without it we have great power. We must stamp out the
traffic in womanhood, it is a survival of barbarism. Womanhood is
a unit; no one woman can be an outcast without dire evil to
family life. What caused the doctors to come together in a
Society for Sanitary and Moral Prophylaxis? It was because the
evil done in dark places came back in injury to the family
life.... We must make ourselves more terrible than an army with
banners to despoilers of womanhood.... Men are no longer to be
excused for writing in scarlet on their foreheads their
incapacity for self-control. None of us is longer to be excused
for cowardice and acquiescence in the sacrifice of womanhood. Not
even that woman--vilest of all creatures on the face of the earth
I do believe--the procuress, shall be beyond the pale of
sympathy, for she is merely the product of the feeling on the
part of men that they owe nothing to women or to themselves in
the way of purity, and the feeling on the part of women that they
have no right to demand of men what men demand of them. If women
are going to amount to anything in government, they would better
begin to practice here and now and band themselves together with
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account