What are some of the incentives to produce abortion? An unmarried woman seduced under false representations by a man who feels no responsibility for his own offspring, suffers alone all the shame and contumely of the act, and is tempted to cause miscarriage to shield her good name. Married women who fear that maternity will interfere with their pleasures, are guilty of forcibly curtailing embryotic life. Others, again, who are poor or are burdened with care or grief, or have licentious or drunken husbands, shrink from adding to an already overburdened existence. The first class, the girls who have lost their virtue under promise of marriage are most deserving of sympathy and commiseration, though none receive less. “Let him who is without sin cast the first stone.” At the least imputation against a fair girl’s character, even those professing to be the followers of the loving Christ, often have so little leniency, so little of the Father’s love in their hearts, that they hug their Christian robes to their bodies, lest they be contaminated by the polluting touch of the victim. They “pass by on the other side” and leave the poor broken-hearted child bleeding by the wayside. The girl’s lessons of life and purity have been learned mainly from one she loved and trusted, only to be betrayed. What wonder that in her ignorance of the value of life she should be tempted to add a second wrong to the first? She knows the shadow that has darkened her path; she realizes: “Alas! for the rarity Of Christian charity Under the sun.” And if she can conceal the evidence of her guilt, she may hope by honest endeavor to retrieve her good name, and thus is tempted to produce an abortion. _Two wrongs can not make one right._ Before God and her own conscience, the only tribunals that in justice have any right to accuse her, she can not by any act gain absolution. When girls are given proper instruction upon the relation of the sexes and understand how to govern and guard themselves; when young men are taught that virtue has as high a meaning for one sex as another, that the protective chivalry of which they boast does not imply that they shall force the woman with whom they associate to the defensive; and that the _paternal_ interest in, and responsibilities for a child are equal to the _maternal_, then the temptation to produce abortion for the purpose of shielding one’s character will not exist. Of the second class, who produce miscarriage for pleasure and selfish interest, there is little to say in extenuation. They may be victims of ignorance or of a false education. The maternal instinct is inherent in every woman’s heart. It seems strange that any morbid idea of pleasure could antagonize the natural aspiration to such an extent that one could destroy the viability of her own offspring.