rents and
offspring, when the bodily and mental health of the mother or child,
or both of them, is in danger. When a lunatic or an idiot, married or
not, makes a woman pregnant, artificial abortion should be allowed;
also in all cases when an insane or epileptic woman becomes pregnant.

An analogous case is that where a drunkard renders his wife pregnant
against her will, especially when he is intoxicated at the moment; for
the offspring runs a great risk of blastophthoria.

It is needless to say that abortion should be permitted whenever
pregnancy seriously endangers the life or health of the mother, or
when a grave disease in the mother condemns the child to become an
invalid. On the other hand, such indications should not be acted on
too lightly; a rational limit is here a matter of practice and common
sense, combined with medical science.

=The Right to Live of Monsters, Idiots, or the Deformed.=--The
preceding remarks naturally lead us to the question whether children
who are born invalids, deformed, or idiots, etc., should be
necessarily condemned to live by the law, and whether special
dispositions should not be made for such cases.

The obligation to preserve, often by means of all the resources of
medical science, miserable creatures, born as cretins or idiots;
children with hydrocephalus or microcephalus, without eyes or ears, or
with atrophied genital organs, etc., is an atrocity sanctioned by the
law. Would it not be better to allow these miserable beings to be
suppressed by means of a painless narcosis, with the consent of the
parents and after an expert medical opinion, instead of condemning
them by law to a life of misery? Science has proved that every
congenital malformation of the brain is as incurable as that of any
other organ.

Here again our legislation is fettered by ignorance and religious
dogma. On one hand, immense armies are organized to kill the most
healthy men by thousands and tens of thousands, and many more
thousands are abandoned to famine, prostitution, alcoholism and
exploitation; on the other hand, medicine is expected to employ its
whole art and efforts in prolonging life as long as possible and thus
martyrizing miserable human wretches, degenerate in body and mind or
both, often when they cry out for death!

Large asylums are built for idiots, and there is much joy when after
many years of persevering effort some devoted person succeeds in
teaching these beings, whose mentali