Such is the language of physicians and statesmen; but a stronger appeal has been made for the sake of morality itself. The detestable crime of _abortion_ is appallingly rife in our day; it is abroad in our land to an extent which would have shocked the dissolute women of pagan Rome. Testimony from all quarters, especially from New England, has accumulated within the past few years to sap our faith in the morality and religion of American women. This wholesale, fashionable murder, how are we to stop it? Hundreds of vile men and women in our large cities subsist by this slaughter of the innocents, and flaunt their ill-gotten gains--the price of blood--in our public thoroughfares. Their advertisements are seen in the newspapers; their soul and body destroying means are hawked in every town. With such temptation strewn in her path, what will the woman threatened with an excessive family do? Will she not yield to evil, and sear her conscience with the repetition of her wickedness? Alas! daily experience in the heart of a great city discloses to us only too frequently the fatal ease of such a course. In view of the injuries of excessive child-bearing on the one hand, and of this prevalent crime on the other, a man of genius and sympathy, Dr. Raciborski of Paris, took the position that the avoidance of offspring to a certain extent is not only legitimate, but should be recommended as a measure of public good. 'We know how bitterly we shall be attacked,' he says, 'for promulgating this doctrine; but if our ideas only render to society the services we expect of them, we shall have effaced from the list of crimes the one most atrocious without exception, that of child-murder, before or after birth, and we shall have poured a little happiness into the bosoms of despairing families, where poverty is allied to the knowledge that offspring can be born only to prostitution or mendicity. The realization of such hopes will console us under the attacks upon our doctrines.' It has been eagerly repeated by some, that the wish to limit offspring arises most frequently from an inordinate desire of indulgence. We reply to such, that they do not know the human heart, and that they do it discredit. More frequently the wish springs from a love of children. The parents seek to avoid having more than they can properly nourish and educate. They do not wish to leave their sons and daughters in want. 'This,' says a writer in _The Nation_ (of New York), in an article on this interesting subject,--'this is not the noblest motive of action, of course, but there is something finely human about it.' 'Very much indeed is it to be wished,' says Dr. Edward Reich, after reviewing the multitudinous evils which result to individuals and society from a too rapid increase in families, 'that the function of reproduction be placed under the dominion of the will.'