If she lets the pregnancy go to term she has the alternative of bringing up the child herself openly or of placing it secretly in a foundling asylum. In the first case, the necessity of publicly acknowledging illegitimate motherhood requires so much moral courage that not one woman in a thousand is equal to it. It is not moral courage alone that is required; the social ostracism could be borne with stoicism and even with equanimity, if with it were not frequently associated the fear or the real danger of starvation. For under our present system the illegitimate mother finds many avenues of activity closed to her. A school teacher would lose her position instantly, and so would a woman in any public position. It is feared that her example might have a contaminating influence on the children or on her fellow workers. Nor could she be a social worker--I know of more than one woman who lost her position with social or philanthropic institutions as soon as it was discovered that she did not live up strictly to the conventional code of sex morality. Nor could she be a private governess. It is thus seen that to acknowledge one's self an illegitimate mother requires so much courage, so much sacrifice, that very, very few mothers are now found that are equal to the task. Especially so when it is taken into consideration that the humiliations and indignities to which the child is subjected and the later reproaches of the child itself make the mother's life a veritable hell. So this alternative is generally out of the question. To give the child to a foundling asylum or to a "baby farm" means generally to condemn it to a slow death--and not such a slow one, either. For as statistics show about ninety to ninety-five per cent. of all babies in those institutions die within a few months. And the very few who survive and grow up have not a happy life. Life is hard enough for anybody; for children who come into the world handicapped by the disgrace of illegitimacy, life is torture indeed. It is with a breaking heart generally and because there is no other way out of the dilemma that a mother puts her baby away in a foundling asylum. She hopes and prays for its speedy death.