Page:The rights of women and the sexual relations.djvu/311

Rh statements that this crime, which has here come to be an every-day measure of expediency and correction, has increased in a frightful degree. In the year 1805 the proportion in New York of still-born children to the entire population was one to sixteen hundred and twelve; in 1820, one to six hundred and fifty-four; in 1840, one to five hundred and sixteen; in 1850, one to three hundred and eighty-six. Dr. Wyne calculated that for the year 1805 there was one abortion in forty-nine births, for 1810 one in thirty-three, for 1815 one in thirty-two, for 1830 one in twenty, for 1840 one in sixteen, for 1845 one in thirteen, for 1850 one in twelve. The same physician told Mrs. Branch that the crime of infanticide had increased since 1805 four hundred and fifteen per cent. If this ratio continues, hardly a child will be born alive in New York, at the end of the century. . And such a population listens to condemnation of "free love" as if it still had any right to condemn anything whatever except itself! How many of the mothers of those thousands of murdered children could say of themselves that they alone were to decide where, when and whom they should love? None of the pharisees, who condemn women like Julia Branch as immoral, have ever asked themselves this weighty question.

"What," asks Mrs. Branch, "is the cause of this frightful increase of this most unnatural of crimes? I can find it only in our present institution of marriage. Not the slightest scruple exists, either in or