Page:Woman and the Bible.pdf/9

5. This declaration puts the brand of infamy upon every woman that ever bore a child.

The wife who places her destiny in the keeping of the father of her children, bestows upon him the wealth of her affection, who goes "down into the valley and shadow of death" to give birth to children, who are to bear the blood and name of her husband to conquests, yet undreamed of, and to generations unborn, is by divine decree made a fountain of iniquity. Would not men and women rather pluck their tongues out by the roots than thus brand the mothers who gave them birth?

The law of God given to Moses in the 12th chapter of Leviticus, clearly pronounces a woman who becomes a mother to be unclean and impure. If she had borne a son she was not allowed to touch any hallowed thing, or enter the sanctuary for three and thirty days, but if she had borne a daughter she was doubly impure, and was unhallowed and barred out of the temple for sixty-six days. This estimate of woman permeates all Jewish and Christian canons. Today to bear a son is considered more honorable and desirable than to bear a daughter, yet our civilization swarms with sons who are worthless, or dissipated, or dishonest, or who wreck the fortunes and happiness of the family while daughters are as a rule, the comfort and mainstay of parents in their declining years.

The Episcopal prayer-book commands the Churching of Women, which service consists of mothers prostrating themselves at the altar, and giving offerings to the Lord to atone for the crime of having borne children.

What worse can be said of a book, or a religion, than that it treats as essentially unclean, the holy office of motherhood?

This insult includes all women, for even the Virgin