. We are apt to think that this is a
new and almost revolutionary demand; it is, however, undoubtedly a
natural, ancient, and recognized privilege of women that they should not
be mothers without their own consent. Even in the Islamic world of the
_Arabian Nights_, we find that high praise is accorded to the "virtue and
courage" of the woman who, having been ravished in her sleep, exposed, and
abandoned on the highway, the infant that was the fruit of this
involuntary union, "not wishing," she said, "to take the responsibility
before Allah of a child that had been born without my consent."[427] The
approval with which this story is narrated clearly shows that to the
public of Islam it seemed entirely just and humane that a woman should not
have a child, except by her own deliberate will. We have been accustomed
to say in later days that the State needs children, and that it is the
business and the duty of women to supply them. But the State has no more
right than the individual to ravish a woman against her will. We are
beginning to realize that if the State wants children it must make it
agreeable to women to produce them, as under natural and equitable
conditions it cannot fail to be. "The women will solve the question of
mankind," said Ibsen in one of his rare and pregnant private utterances,
"and they will do it as mothers." But it is unthinkable that any question
should ever be solved by a helpless, unwilling, and involuntary act which
has not even attained to the dignity of animal joy.

It is sometimes supposed, and even assumed, that the demand of
women that motherhood must never be compulsory, means that they
are unwilling to be mothers on any terms. In a few cases that may
be so, but it is certainly not the case as regards the majority
of sane and healthy women in any country. On the contrary, this
demand is usually associated with the desire to glorify
motherhood, if not, indeed, even with the thought of extending
motherhood to many who are to-day shut out from it. "It seems to
me," wrote Lady Henry Somerset, some years ago ("The Welcome
Child," _Arena_, April, 1895), "that life will be dearer and
nobler the more we recognize that there is no indelicacy in the
climax and crown of creative power, but, rather, that it is the
highest glory of the race. But if voluntary motherhood is the
crown of the race, involuntary compulsory motherhood is the very
opp