Page:The rights of women and the sexual relations.djvu/209

Rh women would never have had any cause of complaint. No, they do not hinder us from becoming mothers, any more than from becoming cooks, and it is always either the hearth or the cradle, to which they refer us when we speak of our human rights. Has a woman ever objected on the ground of paternity, when a man claimed his human rights? No more than it ever occurred to a woman to deny a man the right of suffrage because he was by profession a tailor, a baker, etc. But how is it with the rights of those women who have never been mothers, or who have met with the fate of Niobe? According to your logic, they have no destiny as human beings, and whoever has no destiny, why should he have rights?

But I want to examine your information concerning maternity from another point of view. Just because she is a mother, woman has double claims upon the exercise of rights which man assumes for himself alone. Just because of maternity she must demand that she shall not, on account of social conditions, which she cannot change without being fully qualified as a human being and a citizen, be driven perhaps from want, into the arms of a man, through whom she would never have become a mother, could she have acted independently; just because she is a mother, she must demand such an education as will fit her to become the educator of her child; just because she is a mother, she has the deepest interest in exerting an influence upon those