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 might be described as typically unfeminine and unmaternal—since their sympathies were invariably and unreservedly on the side of the erring mother, and I cannot remember having heard a single woman's voice raised in defence of the right to its life of the unwanted child. On the contrary, mothers of families, devoted to their own children and discharging their duties to them In a manner beyond reproach, have. In my hearing, not only pitied, but justified, the unfortunate creatures who, goaded by fear of shame and want of money, destroy the little life they themselves have given. That attitude seems to me to show that women recognize the comparative slightness of the mere physical tie, and that to them it Is the other factors in the relationship of mother and child which really count—factors which have practically no chance of being brought into play in the case of the unwanted child.

It is eminently characteristic of the servile, and therefore imitative, quality of women's literature that the unwanted child—other than the illegitimate—has played practically no part in it. As long as child–bearing was an involuntary