ty is far inferior to that of a
monkey, to repeat a few words like a parrot, to scribble some words
on paper, or to repeat a prayer mechanically with their eyes turned
toward heaven!

It is difficult to compare these two facts without feeling the bitter
irony of what are euphemistically called our hereditary customs. In
truth, the nurses and teachers who devote themselves to the education
of cretins and idiots would do better to occupy themselves in some
manual work; or even leave the idiots to die, and themselves procreate
healthy and capable children in their place! But this question does
not properly belong to our subject.

=The Rights of the Embryo.=--A distinction is generally made between
artificial abortion practiced in the first months of pregnancy and
that induced in the later months. When the child is born viable, the
term premature labor is used. When this is induced with the object of
getting rid of the child the penalty is much more severe than for
abortion, for it is regarded almost as infanticide.

For this reason, and owing to the difficulty of the whole question, a
mother should never be given the right to destroy the embryo or child
in her womb, excepting in cases where pregnancy has been forced upon
her. Each case should be submitted to a medical examination, and a
doctor's certificate should be required. This is all the more
indicated since our present knowledge makes it easy to prevent
pregnancy by anticonceptional measures. Society is, therefore,
entitled to demand that a mother who has voluntarily conceived a child
has no right to interrupt its development, _i.e._, to kill it. If, as
we hope, we shall eventually obtain more extended rights for women and
greater sexual liberty in general, even in marriage, the reasons
justifying artificial abortion, apart from medical or hygienic
measures, will become more and more rare.

The stigma of shame which is branded on illegitimate maternity
unfortunately justifies many cases of abortion and even infanticide.
Things ought to change in this respect, and in the future no pregnancy
ought to be a source of shame for any healthy woman whatever, nor
furnish the least motive for dissimulation.

If the objection is raised that I am inconsistent; that every man,
and consequently every woman, should have the power to dispose of
their own body on every occasion, and that penal law should therefore
take no cognizance of artificial abortion, I reply that this doe