The most important question that confronts the future is not New Thought, the Juvenile Court, the Tariff, the Single Tax, nor Fletcherism. It is Free Motherhood. The perpetuity of the race depends upon Motherhood. I trust there will be no argument on that ❦ The quality of our race turns on the quality of the parents; and especially does the quality of the child turn on the peace, happiness and well-being of the mother. You can not make the mother a disgraced and taunted thing and expect the progeny to prosper. When you strike a mother, you strike the race. There is no hint in Nature that Motherhood is ever shameful or disgraceful. Only a social and legal fiction ever makes it so. It is vain to look to the Church for reform in this direction. In fact, the Church is the chief sinner. ¶ The necessity for orphan asylums came in with the vows of celibacy and chastity ❦ Wherever these two things exist—celibacy and chastity—orphan asylums flourish ❦ Less than five per cent of the children in orphan asylums are orphans. The rest are waifs and outcasts. If the State did not make the mother a criminal; if Society did not look upon her as disgraced; and if the Church did not refer to her as “ruined,” most of the mothers of these “orphans” would cling to them ❦ For every thousand orphans, nine hundred mothers reach empty arms out into the darkness. The desire of the mother to protect and care for her child is the most persistent instinct that is implanted in the human heart. If there is anything sacred in the world it is mother-love. If there is anything divine in the universe, it is the love of the mother for her baby ❦ We give pensions to the men who fought to save the State. Why not give a pension to every woman who goes down into the valley of death and kisses the white lips of pain? ❦ Isn’t the mother just as necessary to the perpetuity of the State as the soldier? I rather think so. The necessity of the one is absolute, the other is conjectural ❦ Every mother should be recognized by the State “for heroic services.” If she is not married, her pension should be double that which her married sister receives. We must conserve mother-love, not dissipate it. And let us remember this: We can not successfully legislate against the biologic imperative. To trample mother-love ruthlessly into the mire of conventionality, and tear the child from the mother’s arms, and place it in an orphan asylum, is the work of a false and hypocritical “Christianity.” ¶ Now that the whole world is trying to get back on a truthful basis as a move in the line of self-preservation, is it not time that we look this issue squarely in the face and express ourselves concerning it? Before this babe is born it runs the hazard of murder from its conception ❦ That it survives reveals its hold on eternal life. When born, it is greeted with tears, fears, secrecy, untruth, hypocrisy, and its divine heritage of mother-love is traded for a mess of institutional potash.