imple truth that we must
regard every human individual as sacred from the moment of its coming
into existence--and that is a long time before birth. A familiar medical
dogma is, "Keep everything alive." There may be exceptions to it, but it
is dangerous to discuss them with the unprepared. The only safe
principle is to maintain, as long as possible, the life of all--the
centenarian or the embryo conceived since the sun set. At times the
State deliberately takes life on behalf of life. The sentence of
execution passed upon the murderer may be warrantably passed by the
State of the future or its officers upon a monstrous birth, a baby
riddled with congenital syphilis or some such horrible fruit of our
present carelessness and wickedness in such matters. The State may
regard such children or their survival as illegitimate, since the laws
of nature as we see them at work throughout the living world do not
approve the survival of such. Apart from these cases, all children are
legitimate, and all children are natural. Whatever the history of the
reader's parents, he or she was assuredly both a legitimate child and a
natural child--a paradox which may be left to the solution of the
curious. Directly a new human being has been conceived, its right to
existence and survival may be conceded. Vast numbers of human beings are
conceived every year whose conception is a sin against themselves and
the State. That is a question on which the present writer has written
and spoken incessantly for years, and which no one can accuse him of
neglecting. But here we have to deal with the facts of the world as they
are and as they will be for some time to come.

All children are to be cared for. No child should die; there should be
no infant mortality; the children that are not fit to live should not be
conceived, and those that are fit to live should be allowed to live; all
children are legitimate. If the State has any kind of business at all,
this is its business.

Our subject here, the reader may say, is not children, but woman and
womanhood. The reply is that unless we have our principles rightly
formulated, we cannot solve this question of the rights of women as
mothers. Failing our principles, we shall be reduced to the prejudices
which serve as principles for our political parties. We shall have
individualist and socialist at loggerheads, the friends of marriage and
its enemies, and many other opposing parties who cannot solve the
ques