Woman and the New Race quotes

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The most far-reaching social development of modern times is the revolt of woman against sex servitude.

The most important force in the remaking of the world is a free motherhood. Beside this force, the elaborate international programmes of modern statesmen are weak and superficial.

The most far-reaching social development of modern times is the revolt of woman against sex servitude.

The most important force in the remaking of the world is a free motherhood.

Beside this force, the elaborate international programmes of modern statesmen are weak and superficial.

It is these forces, rather than the conditions upon which they react, that are the important factors.

Conditions change, but the animating force goes on forever.

So, too, with woman's struggle for emancipation. Women in all lands and all ages have instinctively desired family limitation. Usually this desire has been laid to economic pressure. Frequently the pressure has existed, but the driving force behind woman's aspiration toward freedom has lain deeper.

By law, by religious canons, by public opinion, by penalties ranging all the way from ostracism to beheading, they have sought to crush this effort. Neither threat of hell nor the infliction of physical punishment has availed.

Women have deceived and dared, resisted and defied the power of church and state.

Quietly, desperately, consciously, they have marched to the gates of death to gain the liberty which the feminine spirit has desired.

We have herded them into slums to become diseased, to become social burdens or to die. We have huddled them together like rabbits to multiply their numbers and their misery.

Instead of saying that we Americanize them, we should confess that we animalize them.

The only freedom we seem to have given them is the freedom to make heavier and more secure their chains. What hope is there for racial progress in this human material, treated more carelessly and brutally than the cheapest factory product?

Does this picture horrify the reader? This is not the whole truth.

A few scattered statistics lack the power to reflect the broken lives of overworked fathers, the ceaseless, increasing pain of overburdened mothers and the agony of childhood fighting its way against the handicaps of ill health, insufficient food, inadequate training and stifling toil.

Can we expect to remedy this situation by dismissing the problem of the submerged native elements with legislative palliatives or treating it with careless scorn?

She can give nothing to her child of herself, of her personality. Training is impossible and sympathetic guidance equally so. Instead, such a mother is tired, nervous, irritated and ill-tempered; a determent, often, instead of a help to her children.

Motherhood becomes a disaster and childhood a tragedy.

It goes without saying that this woman loses also all opportunity of personal expression outside her home. She has neither a chance to develop social qualities nor to indulge in social pleasures.

In doing this, they not only injure their tender growing bodies, but indirectly, they drag down the father's wage …

The home becomes a mere rendezvous for the nightly gathering of bodies numb with weariness and minds drunk with sleep.

" And if they survive the factory, they marry to perpetuate and multiply their ignorance, weakness and diseases.

What shall be said of society? What shall be said of us who permit outworn laws and customs to persist in piling up the appalling sum of public expense, misery and spiritual degradation?

The indictment against the large unwanted family is written in human woe.

Who in the light of intelligent understanding shall have the brazenness to stand up and defend it?

The indictment against the large unwanted family is written in human woe. Who in the light of intelligent understanding shall have the brazenness to stand up and defend it?

One thing we know—the woman who has escaped the chains of too great reproductivity will never again wear them.

The birth rate of the wealthy and upper classes will never appreciably rise. The woman of these classes is free of her most oppressive bonds. Being free, we have a right to expect much of her.

"For our own sakes—for our children's sakes—" plead the mothers, "help us!

Let us be women, rather than breeding machines.

"

I am weaker each time and I know that this must be the last one, for it would be better for me to go, than to bring more neglected babies into the world.

I can hardly sleep at night for worrying. Is there an answer for women like me?

"

The basic freedom of the world is woman's freedom. A free race cannot be born of slave mothers. A woman enchained cannot choose but give a measure of that bondage to her sons and daughters.

No woman can call herself free who does not own and control her body.

No woman can call herself free until she can choose consciously whether she will or will not be a mother.

The basic freedom of the world is woman's freedom.

A free race cannot be born of slave mothers.

A woman enchained cannot choose but give a measure of that bondage to her sons and daughters. No woman can call herself free who does not own and control her body.

Her mission is not to enhance the masculine spirit, but to express the feminine; hers is not to preserve a man-made world, but to create a human world by the infusion of the feminine element into all of its activities.

Woman must not accept; she must challenge.

She must not be awed by that which has been built up around her; she must reverence that within her which struggles for expression. Her eyes must be less upon what is and more clearly upon what should be.

Woman must have her freedom—the fundamental freedom of choosing whether or not she shall be a mother and how many children she will have. Regardless of what man's attitude may be, that problem is hers—and before it can be his, it is hers alone.

She goes through the vale of death alone, each time a babe is born.

As it is the right neither of man nor the state to coerce her into this ordeal, so it is her right to decide whether she will endure it.

The world has been governed too long by repression.

The more fundamental the force that is repressed the more destructive its action.

The disastrous effects of repressing the sex force are written plainly in the health rates, the mortality statistics, the records of crime and the entry books of the hospitals for the insane.

It is mainly through fullness of expression and experience in life that the mass of women, having attained freedom, will accomplish this unparalleled task.

The need of women's lives is not repression, but the greatest possible expression and fulfillment of their desires upon the highest possible plane.

They cannot reach higher planes through ignorance and compulsion. They can attain them only through knowledge and the cultivation of a higher, happier attitude toward sex. Sex life must be stripped of its fear. This is one of the great functions of contraceptives.

They cannot reach higher planes through ignorance and compulsion. They can attain them only through knowledge and the cultivation of a higher, happier attitude toward sex.

Sex life must be stripped of its fear.

This is one of the great functions of contraceptives. That which is enshrouded in fear becomes morbid. That which is morbid cannot be really beautiful.

They cannot reach higher planes through ignorance and compulsion. They can attain them only through knowledge and the cultivation of a higher, happier attitude toward sex. Sex life must be stripped of its fear. This is one of the great functions of contraceptives.

That which is enshrouded in fear becomes morbid. That which is morbid cannot be really beautiful.

A true understanding of every phase of the love life, and such an understanding alone, can reveal it in its purity—in its power of upliftment. Force and fear have failed from the beginning of time. Their fruits are wrecks and wretchedness.

A true understanding of every phase of the love life, and such an understanding alone, can reveal it in its purity—in its power of upliftment.

Force and fear have failed from the beginning of time. Their fruits are wrecks and wretchedness.

Knowledge and freedom to choose or reject the sexual embrace, according as it is lovely or unlovely, and these alone, can solve the problem.

There is the case in a nutshell. Family limitation will always be practiced as it is now being practiced—either by birth control or by abortion. We know that. The one means health and happiness—a stronger, better race. The other means disease, suffering, death.

The woman who goes to the abortionist's table is not a criminal but a martyr—a martyr to the bitter, unthinkable conditions brought about by the blindness of society at large.

These conditions give her the choice between the surgeon's instruments and the sacrificing of what is highest and holiest in her—her aspiration to freedom, her desire to protect the children already hers. These conditions—not the woman—outface society with this question:

"Contraceptives or Abortion—which shall it be?"

There are several means of preventing conception which are both certain and harmless. What those means are the state laws forbid me to say.

If I should defy the state laws and name those contraceptives, the federal laws would forbid this book's going through the mails. Nor can I, without coming into conflict with the laws, tell why these means are reliable.

No surgeon, no matter how perfect his instruments, would expect perfect results from the simplest operation did he not exercise the greatest possible care. Common sense, good judgment and taking pains are necessary in the use of all contraceptives.

More and more perfect means of preventing conception will be developed as women insist upon them.

Every woman should make it plain to her physician that she expects him to be informed upon this subject. She should refuse to accept evasive answers. An increasing demand upon physicians will inevitably result in laboratory researches and experimentation.

And so it is the world over.

The very word "proletarian," as Hardy points out, means "producer of children."

The children thus carelessly produced undermine the health of the mother, deepen the family's poverty, destroy the happiness of the home, and dishearten the father; all this in addition to being future competitors in the labor market.

We may blame public officials and individual employers, but our burdens were crushing before these were born. We look now here, now there, for the cause of our condition—everywhere but at the one to blame.

We fight again and again for our rights, only to be conquered by our own kind, our own children, our brother's, our neighbor's.

Let us carry to its logical conclusion the principle of limitation which has been partially applied by labor unions. The way to get rid of labor problems, unemployment, low wages, the surplus, unwanted population, is to stop breeding.

In Spain I saw a bull fight. It was in the great arena at Barcelona.

As bull after bull went down, his magnificent, defeated strength bleeding away through wounds inflicted by his weak but skillful assailant, I thought of the world of workers and their oppressors.

As each bull was sent into the arena, he was confronted by one assailant and twenty confusers.

Diplomats make it their business to conceal the facts, and politicians violently denounce the politicians of other countries. There is a long beating of tom-toms by the press and all other agencies for influencing public opinion.

Facts are distorted and lies invented until the common people cannot get at the truth.

Yet, when the war is over, if not before, we always find that "a place in the sun," "a path to the sea," "a route to India" or something of the sort is at the bottom of the trouble.

We are not willing to let it be done.

Mother hearts cling to children, no matter how diseased, misshapen and miserable. Sons and daughters hold fast to parents, no matter how helpless.

We do not allow the weak to depart; neither do we cease to bring more weak and helpless beings into the world. Among the dire results is war, which kills off, not the weak and the helpless, but the strong and the fit.

Let us see how these principles have affected the development of the present moral codes and some of their shifting standards. When we have finished this analysis, we shall know why objectors to birth control raise the "morality" question.

The church has sought to keep women ignorant upon the plea of keeping them "pure."

To this end it has used the state as its moral policeman. Men have largely broken the grip of the ecclesiastics upon masculine education.

Certain it is that the hierarchy created about the whole love life of woman an atmosphere of degradation.

Fear and shame have stood as grim guardians against the gate of knowledge and constructive idealism.

The sex life of women has been clouded in darkness, restrictive, repressive and morbid.

Being a challenge to the church, it is also, in less degree, a challenge to the state. The woman who takes a fearless stand for the incoming sex ideals must expect to be assailed by reactionaries of every kind.

Imperialists and exploiters will fight hardest in the open, but the ecclesiastic will fight longest in the dark.

He understands the situation best of all; he best knows what reaction he has to fear from the morals of women who have attained liberty. For, be it repeated, the church has always known and feared the spiritual potentialities of woman's freedom.

This will be no easy undertaking; it is usually much easier to enact statutes than to revise them.

Laws are seldom exactly what they seem, rarely what their advocates claim for them.

The "obscenity" statutes are particularly deceptive.

If the obscenity laws are not radically revised or repealed, few reactionaries will dare to face the public derision that will greet their attempts to use them to stay woman's progress.

The French have a saying concerning "mort main"—the dead hand. This hand of the past reaches up into the present to smother the rising flame of modern ideals, to reforge our chains when we have broken them, to arrest progress.

It is the hand of such as have lived on earth but have not loved humanity. At the call of those who fear progress and freedom, it rises from the gloom of forgotten things to oppress the living.

It is only a question of how long it will take women to make up their minds to this result.

The law of woman's being is stronger than any statute, and the man-made law must sooner or later give way to it.

Man has not protected woman in matters most vital to her—but she is awaking and will sooner or later realize this and assert herself. If she acts in mass now, it will be another cheering evidence that she is moving consciously toward her goal.

The silence of the centuries has been broken.

The wrongs of woman and the rights of woman have found voices. These voices differ from all others that have been raised in woman's behalf.

So at the crest of the wave of woman's revolt comes the movement for voluntary motherhood—not a separate, isolated movement, but the manifestation of a cosmic force—the force that moves the wave itself.

The walls of the cloister have fallen before the cries of a rising womanhood.

The barriers of prurient puritanism are being demolished. Free woman has torn the veil of indecency from the secrets of life to reveal them in their power and their purity. Womanhood yet bound has beheld and understood.

The walls of the cloister have fallen before the cries of a rising womanhood. The barriers of prurient puritanism are being demolished.

Free woman has torn the veil of indecency from the secrets of life to reveal them in their power and their purity.

Womanhood yet bound has beheld and understood. A public whose thoughts and opinions had been governed by men and by women engulfed in the old order has been shocked awake.

The subject of birth control is being lifted out of the mire into which it was cast by puritanism and given its proper place among the sciences and the ideals of this generation. With this effort has come an illumination of all other social problems.

Society is beginning to give ear to the promise of modern womanhood: "When you have ceased to chain me, I shall by the virtue of a free motherhood remake the world."

It would be miraculous indeed if that victory which has been won, had been gained without great toil, insufferable anguish and sacrifice such as all persons experience when they dare to brave the conventions of the dead past or blaze a trail for a new …

This is the one movement in which pioneering was unnecessary.

The cry for deliverance always goes up. It is its own pioneer.

The facts have always stared us in the face. No one who has worked among women can be ignorant of them. I remember that ever since I was a child, the idea of large families associated itself with poverty in my mind.

These women invariably expressed their love for children, but voiced a common plea for means to avoid others, in order that they might give sufficient care to those already born. They wanted them "to grow up decent."

For ten days the two rooms of this clinic were crowded to their utmost. Then came the police.

We were hauled off to jail and eventually convicted of a "crime."

What is the goal of woman's upward struggle? Is it voluntary motherhood? Is it general freedom? Or is it the birth of a new race? For freedom is not fruitless, but prolific of higher things.

Being the most sacred aspect of woman's freedom, voluntary motherhood is motherhood in its highest and holiest form. It is motherhood unchained—motherhood ready to obey its own urge to remake the world.

Voluntary motherhood implies a new morality—a vigorous, constructive, liberated morality. That morality will, first of all, prevent the submergence of womanhood into motherhood. It will set its face against the conversion of women into mechanical maternity and toward the creation of a new race.

Then and then only can the mother cease to be an incubator and be a mother indeed. Then only can she transmit to her sons and daughters the qualities which make strong individuals and, collectively, a strong race.

Voluntary motherhood also implies the right of marriage without maternity.

Two utterly different functions are developed in the two relationships. In order to give the mate relationship its full and free play, it is necessary that no woman should be a mother against her will.

Voluntary motherhood also implies the right of marriage without maternity. Two utterly different functions are developed in the two relationships.

In order to give the mate relationship its full and free play, it is necessary that no woman should be a mother against her will.

There are other reasons, of course—reasons more frequently emphasized—but the reason just mentioned should never be overlooked.

Marriage, quite aside from parentage, also gives two people invaluable experience. When parentage follows in its proper time, it is a better parentage because of the mutual adjustment and development—because of the knowledge thus gained.

Few couples are fitted to understand the sacred mystery of child life until they have solved some of the problems arising out of their own love lives.

Maternal love, which usually follows upon a happy, satisfying mate love, becomes a strong and urgent craving. It then exists for two powerful, creative functions. First, for its own sake, and then for the sake of further enriching the conjugal relationship.

For this is the miracle of free womanhood, that in its freedom it becomes the race mother and opens its heart in fruitful affection for humanity.

How narrow, how pitifully puny has become motherhood in its chains!

The modern motherhood enfolds one or two adoring children of its own blood, and cherishes, protects and loves them. It does not reach out to all children. When motherhood is a high privilege, not a sordid, slavish requirement, it will encircle all.

There will be no killing of babies in the womb by abortion, nor through neglect in foundling homes, nor will there be infanticide. Neither will children die by inches in mills and factories.

No man will dare to break a child's life upon the wheel of toil.

Voluntary motherhood will not be passive, resigned, or weak. Out of its craving will come forth a fierceness of love for its fruits that will make such men as remain unawakened stand aghast at its fury when offended.

Voluntary motherhood will not be passive, resigned, or weak. Out of its craving will come forth a fierceness of love for its fruits that will make such men as remain unawakened stand aghast at its fury when offended.

The tigress is less terrible in defense of her offspring than will be the human mother.

The daughters of such women will not be given over to injustice and to prostitution; the sons will not perish in industry nor upon the battle field. Nor could they meet these all too common fates if an undaunted motherhood were there to defend.

The daughters of such women will not be given over to injustice and to prostitution; the sons will not perish in industry nor upon the battle field. Nor could they meet these all too common fates if an undaunted motherhood were there to defend.

Childhood and youth will be too valuable in the eyes of society to waste them in the murderous mills of blind greed and hate.

This is the dawn. Womanhood shakes off its bondage. It asserts its right to be free. In its freedom, its thoughts turn to the race. Like begets like. We gather perfect fruit from perfect trees.

Nor could they meet these all too common fates if an undaunted motherhood were there to defend. Childhood and youth will be too valuable in the eyes of society to waste them in the murderous mills of blind greed and hate.

This is the dawn. Womanhood shakes off its bondage.

It asserts its right to be free. In its freedom, its thoughts turn to the race. Like begets like. We gather perfect fruit from perfect trees.