The Profits of Religion, Fifth EditionSinclair, Upton
Religion
The Profits of Religion, Fifth Edition
Sinclair, Upton
Christianity -- Controversial literature
that in the United States alone there are a million abortions
every year; and consider that all this hideous mass of suffering--a
bloody European war going on continually, unheeded by any newspaper
correspondent--might be avoided by the use of a simple sterilizing
formula, which we are not permitted to give! The Federation of
Catholic Societies have placed a law upon the statute-books of the
nation, and of all the states as well; the whole power of police and
courts and jails is at the service of religious bigots, and a young
girl is sent to prison and forcibly fed with a tube through the nose
for telling poverty-ridden slum-women how to keep from becoming
pregnant!
And go among the sleek, cynical men of the world, the judges and
district attorneys, the commissioners of correction and doctors who
perpetrated this infamy under, a so-called "reform" administration in
New York City--and what do you find? The first thing you find is that
they themselves, one and all, practice birth-control with their wives
or their mistresses. The second thing you find is that the
statute-books are crowded with other laws which they make no pretense
of enforcing; for example, the law which forbids the saloons to be
open on Sunday--which law they take the liberty of understanding to
mean that the saloons shall not have their front doors open on Sunday.
You will find that they are not at all afraid of the religious taboos;
they are afraid of the religious vote--and even more they are afraid
of the campaign contributions of sweat-shop manufacturers and
landlords, who cannot see what would become of prosperity if the women
of the slums were to cease to breed. So once more we discover the wolf
in sheep's clothing, the trader, making use of Tradition-worship;
hiding behind the skirts of devout old maiden aunts and grandmothers,
who repeat the instructions which God gave to Adam and Eve, "Be
fruitful and multiply and replenish the earth." As if God were as
blind as a Fifth Avenue preacher, and could see no difference between
the Garden of Eden, full of all fruits that grow and all creatures
that run and fly and swim, and a modern East Side tenement-room, with
an oil stove and no windows and no water-closet, and the price of
cabbage seven cents a pound!
#Sheep#
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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