“I consulted a woman, a friend in whom I trusted. I found that she had perpetrated that outrage on herself and on others. She told me it was not murder to kill a child any time before its birth. Of this she labored to convince me, and railed in the aid of her ‘family physician,’ to give force to her arguments. He argued that it was right and just for wives thus to protect themselves against the results of their husband’s sensualism,—told me that God and human laws would approve of killing children before they were born, rather than curse them with an undesired existence. My only trouble was, with God’s view of the case. I could not get rid of the feeling that it was an outrage on my body and soul, and on my unconscious babe. He argued that my child, at five months (which was the time), had no life, and where there was no life, no life could be taken. Though I determined to do the deed, or get the ‘family physician’ to do it, my womanly instincts, my reason, my conscience, my self-respect, my entire nature, revolted against my decision. My Womanhood rose up in withering condemnation. And, after the deed was done, I felt that I could never respect myself again; that I could never again appear in society; that if I did, all that was pure and true in manhood and womanhood would shrink from me as a polluted, disgusting object. “I tried to cast the blame on my husband, who had imposed the necessity upon me. I tried to feel that the outrage and the guilt were all his own; that, had he heeded my prayer, and dealt justly by me, I should never have been driven to the dread alternative of ante-natal murder, or of giving birth to a child I did not want. But I saw and felt, that however great the wrong he had done to me, the fact still remained,—my nature was outraged, if not by my consent, yet by my sufferance. I knew I could have saved myself from maternity, had I been resolute to do so; and that, having submitted to the relation in which it originated, I had no right to add to the outrage by killing my child. I felt myself to be a crushed, prostituted, abandoned woman. Can any apology be offered for a woman who commits the crime of ante-natal murder, after she has voluntarily yielded to the relation that leads to maternity?