Page:Wrong and Right Methods of Dealing with Social Evil - Elizabeth Blackwell (1883).djvu/43

Rh of State-regulated vice. This fact is, the cruelty to ignorant women, the degradation inflicted upon all womanhood, by "accepting" the life of lust as an industry that may be permitted and organized by law.

Mark well the words: "The young girl, thoughtless or fallen, 'accepts' the degrading life to secure a certain livelihood; the innocent girl, deceived and sold, becomes accustomed or inured to this hideous soul-destroying bondage." The innocent girl, as well as the fallen girl, although brought up under the influence of what we call Christian civilization, may thus, under the sanction of State and Municipal laws, accept, and will then become accustomed to, the conversion of her body into a machine for obscenity; whilst her soul, with the connivance—nay, under the sanction—of the State, is allowed to fall into the most hideous depths of our social hell! It is this corrupting influence of the law on the moral sense of womanhood, through the "acceptance" by law of a life of public lust for any woman, which is the most direful and ominous sign of this our nineteenth century of Christianity.

Facts disprove the false and dangerous assertion often made, that if prostitution (i.e., the buying and selling the human body for lust) be restrained and gradually destroyed, no virtuous woman could walk the streets in safety. Exactly the opposite is the