A CHAPTER FOR MARRIED PEOPLE 555 



produce abortions at early periods of pregnancy, have 

 no excuse, except the pretense that they do not con- 

 sider it murder until the child quickens. 



''No, not murder, you say, for 'there has not been 

 any life in the child.' Do not attempt to evade, even 

 to man, a crime which cannot be hidden from the 

 All-seeing. The poor mother has not herself felt the 

 life of the child perhaps, but that is a quibble only 

 of the laws of man, founded indeed upon the view, 

 now universally recognized as incorrect, that the 

 child's life began when its movements were first strong 

 enough to be perceptible. There is, in fact, no mo- 

 ment after conception when it can be said that the 

 child has not life, and the crime of destroying human 

 life is as heinous and as sure before the period of 

 'quickening' has been attained as afterward. But you 

 still defend your horrible deed by saying, 'Well, if 

 there be, as you say, this mere animal life, equivalent 

 at the most to simple vitality, there is no mind, no soul 

 destroyed, and therefore there is no crime committed.' 

 Just so surely as one would destroy and root out of 

 existence all the fowls in the world by destroying all 

 the eggs in existence, so certain it is that you do by 

 your act destroy the animal man in the egg, and the 

 soul which animates it. A^'lien is the period that in- 

 telligence comes to the infant! Are its first feeble 

 strugglings any evidence of its presence? Has it any 

 appreciable quantity at birth! Has it any valuable, 

 useful quantity even when a year old! When, then, 

 is it that destruction is harmless or comparatively sin- 

 less! Wliile awaiting your metaphysical answer, I 

 will tell you when it is sinful. Murder is always 

 sinful, and murder is the wilful destruction of a 

 human being at any period of its existence, from its 



33 



