I believe that a moral code, which is too exacting to be observed by the average person, fails to accomplish the restraint or reform that is desired, so that, after all, it becomes essential to lay down such rules as the average men or women can follow as guides for their actions. A reformer, who starts out with the broad declaration that it is immoral to take human life, and a murderous act to destroy a half-formed human being in its mother’s womb, and that it is equally murderous to prevent the recent products of the sexual act from becoming a viable being, fails to make the impression he desires. The first half of the proposition neutralizes the second of its sacred essence, in placing on the same level the organic function of conception and the animal function of the sexual act. This view is so manifestly absurd to the person of even ordinary perception, that I feel assured, that it would neither lessen feticide nor sexual excess. Spermatozoa on the one hand, and the ova of the female on the other, are, even in the natural and uninterrupted course of nature, destined for destruction, for whenever the female menstruates, these ova are discharged, and whenever the male copulates, hundreds of spermatozoa are found swimming in the spermatic fluid, which in case there be no ripened ovum are nothing more than so much waste secretion. Both are a means to an end, and that end is the reproduction of the species. It appears to me a flight of fancy, from the sublime to the ridiculous, to assign to the sexual act the same importance as to the passive function of conception, and I believe that doctrines of this nature lack not only the least scientific support, but weaken any argument in favor of the moral or spiritual aspect, which alone raises the question of feticide from a social evil to a mortal sin.