Such persons would not shrink from the perpetration of any crime, be it ever so heinous and black. These wretches are too cowardly to thrust a poniard into their victims on the highway, but ever ready to operate in secrecy in the abortion chamber, which is hidden from the eyes of man. I have known abortions being sought and abortions being committed, upon the flimsy pretext of being too weak, or too sick at the stomach. These are shallow subterfuges, that should not be countenanced by any conscientious practitioner. Many reasons are either imaginary or pretended, and I have often proved the fallacy of pretensions of an inability to carry a child, after women had gone through the abortion mills, by persuading them to become reconciled, for the time being, and that I would see them through to a happy end, and in no case were their fears justified by subsequent developments. There is a great deal in controlling the minds of these women, and directing them into wholesome channels of thought, and after that they become much happier and contented than ever before in their married lives. If the proposition is generally accepted, that abortions are justifiable as a therapeutical expedient, you open the door to the criminally inclined. Wily women will impose upon inexperienced practitioners by feigning physical suffering as a result of pregnancy, for the purpose of getting rid of their fetuses. There is a certain amount of hardship and discomfort associated with the average pregnancy for a part of the period at least, but this should be suffered with a mother’s fortitude. The testimony of the early canons of the Catholic Church is very decisive on the crime of abortion, namely, “that the destruction of the fetus in the womb of its parent, at any period from the first moment of conception, is a crime equal in turpitude to murder.” In Protestant countries abortions are on the increase, and in America it is one of the crying crimes of society, which has so thoroughly tainted and defiled the moral sense of American communities, that it has become next to impossible to get a jury of twelve men who will agree on a verdict to punish this dastardly foul crime of murder, and the abortionist is thus encouraged in his iniquitous vocation. Professor J. Taber Johnson, of Maryland, stated in his annual oration before the State Medical Society: “The difficulty of conviction for producing abortion is shown in the statement of the Attorney-General of Massachusetts, that of thirty-two arrests and trials of abortionists in that State, in a period of eight years, not a single conviction resulted; and this fact is equally true of other States.” This is indeed a sad commentary on the jury system, which often degenerates into a farce or travesty on justice.