We have seen that it is no trifling matter, this awful waste of human life. It is a subject that demands the best efforts of the whole medical profession, both as a body and as men, whose every relation its members are alike best able to appreciate, to understand, and to advise concerning. "Physicians alone," says Prof. Hodge, "can rectify public opinion; they alone can present the subject in such a manner that legislators can exercise their powers aright in the preparation of suitable laws; that moralists and theologians can be furnished with facts to enforce the truth upon the moral sense of the community, so that not only may the crime of infanticide be abolished, but criminal abortion properly reprehended; and that women in every rank and condition of life may be made sensible of the value of the fœtus, and of the high responsibility which rests upon its parents."[23] "If the community were made to understand and to feel that marriage, where the parties shrink from its highest responsibilities, is nothing less than legalized prostitution, many would shrink from their present public confession of cowardly, selfish, and sinful lust. If they were taught, by the speech and daily practice of their medical attendants, that a value attaches to the unborn child, hardly increased by the accident of its birth, they also would be persuaded or compelled to a similar belief in its sanctity, and to a commensurate respect."[24] We have seen that the above is the deliberate decision of those who, from their observation and knowledge of the subject, are best able to judge. "Whatever estimate may attach to our opinion," says an eminent medical journalist, "we believe that not only ought these things not so to be, but that the public should know it from good authority. For ourselves, we have no fear that the truth, in reference to the crime of procuring abortion, would do aught but good. It would appear that sheer ignorance, in many honest people, is the spring of the horrible intra-uterine murder which exists among us; why not, then, enlighten this ignorance? It would be far more effectually done by some bold and manly appeal than by the scattered influence of honorable practitioners alone. Will not the mischief, by and by, be all the more deadly for delaying exposure and attempting relief?"[25] We have also seen that "it might be, it very likely would be, for our immediate pecuniary interest, as a profession, to preserve silence; for we have shown that abortions, of all causes, tend to break down and ruin the health of the community at large. But to harbor this thought, even for a moment, were dishonorable."[26] * * * * *