it is undeniable that motherhood is woman's most manifest
function. If that be so, how can there be any more immorality in the
exercise of it than in the process of digestion? What can be clearer
than that a woman has the inherent right to bear children if she wish?
And there is nothing in experience or morals which demands one father
for all her children. It should be for her to say whether she will have
one father for all her children or one for each. And if the question be
asked how, under such conditions, the interests of the children would be
safe-guarded, I ask if they are safe-guarded now. The right-minded man
provides as he can for them; as would be the case always; while the
wrong-minded man does not now provide properly for them. Besides, is the
mother not to be considered? Do we not all know of women who in
widowhood take care of their families? Do we not know of women who take
care of their husbands as well as of their children? Women, of course,
should, in any case, be economically free. But at least let them be sex
free; let them decide for themselves whether they will have many or few
or no children. Teach woman to be economically independent, give her the
opportunity for full knowledge of all that pertains to motherhood; make
the motherhood a pure and beautiful manifestation of physical activity
if you will, but without forgetting that it is only simple and natural;
avoiding that hysterical glorification of the function in poetry and the
hiding of it in actual life as if it were an unclean thing. But the
important matter is to understand that a woman has a right to bear a
child if she wish. Nothing is more distinctly pointed out by the
constitution of her body, and therefore it is impossible that there can
be any immorality in the exercise of the function. To put my idea in as
few and as bold words as I can: Motherhood is a right and has no proper
relation to marriage. Marriage is a purely artificial relation, and not
only is it not justified by its results, but distinctly it is
discredited by them. By it a man becomes a vile hypocrite since he
loudly avows a moral standard and a course of conduct which in private
by his acts he denies and puts to scorn; by it a woman becomes a slave,
giving up her rights in her own body; submitting to ravishment, and
becoming the accidental mother to unwished, unwelcome children; by it
children are robbed of their plain right to the best equipment that can
be given them;