I have stated that in no case should abortion be permitted, or allowed to be permitted, by the advice or approval of a single physician; that in all cases where such counsel is taken, it should be from a consultation of at least two competent men. Submitted to such a tribunal, seldom indeed would the sanction be given. Ill health would be no excuse, for there is hardly a conceivable case where the invalidism could either not be relieved in some other mode, or where by an abortion it would not be made worse. The fear of childbed would be no excuse, for we have seen that its risks are in reality less than those of an abortion, and its pains and anguish can now be materially mitigated or entirely subdued by anæsthesia, which the skill of medical science can induce, and should induce, in every case of labor. My remarks apply not to first pregnancies alone, when one might expect that women would naturally be anxious and timid, but even to those cases of pregnancy that have been preceded by difficult and dangerous labors. It has been urged, and not so absurdly as would at first sight appear, that the present possibilities of painless and so much safer delivery, by changing thus completely the primal curse, from anguish to a state frequently of positive pleasure, remove a drawback of actual advantage, and, by offering too many inducements for pregnancy, tend to keep women in that state the greater part of their menstrual lives.[17] Much of the low morale of the community, as regards the guilt of abortion, depends upon the very erroneous doctrines extensively inculcated by popular authors and lecturers for their own sinister purposes. One of these is the doctrine that it is detrimental to a woman's health to bear children beyond a certain number, or oftener than at certain stated periods, and that any number of abortions are not merely excusable, as preventives, but advisable; it being entirely forgotten that the frequency of connection may be kept within bounds, and the times of its occurrence regulated, by those who are not willing to hazard its consequences; that if women will, to escape trouble, or for fashion's sake, forego the duty and privilege of nursing,--a law entailed upon them by nature, and seldom neglected without disastrous results to their own constitutions,--they must expect more frequent impregnation; that the habit of aborting is generally attended with the habit of more readily conceiving; and that abortions, accidental, and still more if induced, are generally attended by the loss of subsequent health, if not of life.