“But I must express my earnest conviction, that any woman, any wife, who permits herself to be made the instrument of bringing into life a new existence, unwelcome to her own soul, must, in some degree, be wanting in that self-respect which is an inseparable accompaniment of, nay, an essential element in, true nobility of character. That woman must feel degraded before her own soul, who, for any cause, in or out of _legal_ marriage, suffers herself to be made the means of such an outrage upon her innocent and helpless babe. Better, a thousand times, that she leave her legal husband at once and forever, than allow soul and body to be thus prostituted, and herself to be made accessory to a deed so unnatural and unjust as that of giving birth to a child whose existence is repudiated and loathed by her own heart. “Public opinion, based on his superior physical strength and (hitherto) superior intellectual development, has accorded to man the dignity of lordship. Looking over the face of the earth, he says, ‘See all things for my use, even woman.’ And as the Bible, in many of its teachings, as these are explained, sanctions this arrogance, declaring that the ‘man was not made for the woman, but the woman for the man,’ she herself, the just authority of Nature being educated out of her, and the arbitrary authority of man educated into her, believes it her duty to yield implicit obedience to all the demands of the man to whom she has declared allegiance at the altar;—the _altar_, truly; for there she is frequently offered a propitiation to satisfy the demands of man’s unholy passion; and from henceforth this being, created with reason, conscience and intuitions of her own, and for her own guidance, believes it her highest duty to sacrifice all these to the authority and the licensed sensualism of the husband, for whose pleasure she was created, and to ‘obey even as Sarah obeyed Abraham, calling him Lord.’ “This much may be said to account for the fact that so many women, otherwise excellent and amiable, lend themselves to the commission of this great crime; a crime against themselves, against their children, against their husbands, against our great humanity. And while thus prostituting their persons according to law (made for this very end, and solely by those who prostitute them), they deceive themselves into the stupid belief that they are leading pure and virtuous lives, and look with scorn and contempt upon the poor sister who commits the same unnatural and revolting deed in an unlawful and less reputable manner.