“The woman who, in youth, is flattered and caressed for the charms of her person, the sweetness of her temper, and the goodness of her heart, when married to a man who thus regards her as but the instrument of his pleasure, soon loses the charms for which she was caressed, and, while the husband is in his prime, she enters upon a premature old age; her physical strength exhausted by the almost constant suffering and agony attendant upon giving existence to those poor, unwelcome ones,—her beauty faded, her temper soured, her whole soul embittered by a consciousness of her hard lot, and her mental nature stunted in its growth,—for what leisure has she to attend to the wants of her own spirit, while her energies are taxed to the utmost with the care of her living children, who are solely dependent on her, and she preparing to add another to the number? How can she fill the treasure-house of her own soul with ‘things new and old,’ under all these adverse circumstances, and while the present physical wants of her little ones are constantly clamoring, ‘Give! give!’ Does not reason, does not justice, demand for woman that she have full opportunity for the development of her own Womanhood, soul, body, and spirit? Has not she, as an individual child of God and member of the human family, a _right_ to this? Does not the well-being of such children as she may righteously bring into existence loudly call for a full and _practical_ recognition, on the part of every husband and every man, of her right to decide for herself when, how often, and under what circumstances, she shall assume the office of Maternity, or be subjected to the relation that may issue in maternity? Does not the happiness, the best interest of the husband, require it? Does not Humanity itself demand it? “And how must that woman, in whose soul the theory of passive obedience has not wholly eradicated nature, regard the husband who causes her thus to curse ‘the day wherein she was born’ a woman? In her inmost soul, she must look upon him as the half-enlightened slave looks upon his master, and bitterly reproach him for victimizing her to his own base passion, and for his own short-lived gratification, irrespective of the woful consequences to her whom he has sworn to cherish, honor and protect. And justly does she thus regard him. No wife can love and honor such a husband. He is to her what the executioner is to the victim, or the slaveholder to his crushed and outraged slaves. She cannot but loathe him.