Part 6

While in 1856 there were 387 still prematurely, and 1556 at the full time; or 1 in 4.02.

From these figures there can be drawn but one conclusion, that criminal abortion prevails to an enormous extent in New York, and that it is steadily and rapidly increasing. “We cannot refer,” was well said by a former inspector of that city, “such a hecatomb of human offspring to natural causes.” We shall now endeavor to prove this point by other reasoning.

That our deductions concerning the population and births of France are perfectly legitimate, is admitted beforehand by the leading political economists of the day; ignorant as they were in its various relations of much of the evidence now brought forward, and of the conclusion to which the whole matter, directly and with almost mathematical exactness, is proved to tend.

“In France,” remarks De Jonnés, “the fecundity of the people is restrained within the strictest limits.”

“The rate of increase of the French population,” says Mill, “is the slowest in Europe; the number of births not increasing at all, while the proportion of births to the population is considerably diminishing.”

We have seen, moreover, that in France the actual ratio of living births is constantly and rapidly diminishing, while the still-births, actual and proportional, are as fast increasing; that the premature births progress in similar ratio, and by deduction and actual statistics, the criminal abortions; and that these facts obtain not merely in the metropolis, but throughout the country.

What are the causes of these remarkable facts, need it now be asked? Let all allowances be made for certain conjugal habits extensively existing among the French, and by no means rarely imitated in this country, but the proportionate decrease of living births is too enormous, the actual and proportionate increase of premature and still-births is too frightful to be wholly explained thus, or as West, Husson, and De Jonnés have thought, to be attributed to a mere progressive lack of fecundity. Reason and the evidence alleged compel us to believe that in great measure they are owing to criminal abortion.

Political economists allow the facts in France to be as we have stated. Their interpretation of the causes, unwilling as they would be to confess its ultimate bearing, we now compel to serve as evidence.

“They depend,” according to one writer, “either on physical agents, especially climate, or on the degree of civilization of a people, their domestic and social habits.” “In France the climate is favorable to an increase of population, and this obstacle, this restraint, is found in its advanced civilization.”

“This diminution of births,” says Legoyt, “in the presence of a constant increase of the general population and of marriages, can be attributed to nothing else than wise and increased foresight on the part of the parent.”

“The French peasant is no simple countryman, no downright ‘Paysan du Danube;’ both in fact and in fiction he is now ‘le rusé paysan.’ That is the stage which he has reached in the progressive development which the constitution of things has imposed on human intelligence and human emancipation.”

“These facts are only to be accounted for in two ways. Either the whole number of births which nature admits of, and which happen in some circumstances, do not take place, or if they do, a large proportion of those who are born, die. The retardation of increase results either from mortality or prudence; from Mr. Malthus’s positive, or from his preventive check; and one or the other of these must and does exist, and very powerfully too, in all old societies. Wherever population is not kept down by the prudence of individuals or of the State, it is kept down by starvation or disease.”

But on the other hand, it has been forgotten that the alternative supposed does not exist in the case we have instanced. Marriages in France, unlike some other continental States, are continually increasing, and starvation and disease are yearly being shorn of their power. The authors quoted are therefore forced to a single position; that the lessening of births can only be owing to “prudence” on the part of the community.

Moreover, it is allowed by Mill and by Malthus himself, that so much of the decrease as cannot thus be explained, must be attributed to influences generally prevalent in Europe in earlier ages, and in Asia to the present time. “Throughout Europe these causes have much diminished, but they have nowhere ceased to exist.” Several of them have been named by the authority now quoted. Another, and greater than them all, he leaves unspoken; we are compelled to supply for him the omission.

The practice of destroying the fœtus in utero, to say nothing of infanticide, history declares to have obtained among all the earlier nations of the world, the Jews alone excepted, and to a very great extent. Aristotle defends it, and Plato. It is mentioned by Juvenal, Ovid, Seneca, and Cicero, and is denounced by the earlier Christians. It was common in Europe through the middle ages, and still prevails among the Mohammedans, Chinese, Japanese, Hindoos, and most of the nations of Africa and Polynesia, to such an extent, that we may well doubt whether more have ever perished in those countries by plague, by famine, and the sword.

It is evident, therefore, that the actual and proportionate increase of still-births, and, by induction, setting aside all probable cases of infanticide, of abortion, and the comparative increase of a population reciprocally influence and govern each other so completely, that from the one it may in any given case be almost foreseen what the other must prove.

It is impossible that the results quoted from the Registry of New York, any more than those of France, even if so far, can in any great measure be owing to natural causes alone. They are wholly inexplicable on any principles, “which do not recognize an amount of guilt at which humanity shudders.” In comparing that city with Paris, certain allowances must indeed be made; abroad, for the effects of wars and conscription, of despotism, and of migration outward; at home, for the effects of governmental laxity, and of migration inward. In both cities the amount of prostitution, an element not to be lost sight of, must be nearly the same; and in both, under the steady progress of science, medical and hygienic, the ratio of fœtal mortality, unless induced by criminal causes, may year by year be supposed to have been steadily diminished.

We have seen that in New York, in the absence of all influences that tend to keep down population in foreign countries, old and crowded, and under the yoke of despotism, the effects, attributable elsewhere to these causes, exist, and to a greater degree than in any other country;

That the ratio of fœtal deaths to the population had swelled from 1 in 1633, in 1805, to 1 in 340, in 1849; while in France, at a later period, 1851, they were only about 1 in 1000;

That the actual number of fœtal deaths in seven years, from 1850 to 1857, had very nearly doubled;

That the fœtal deaths, as compared with the total of births, elsewhere in cases of illegitimacy, where the results are the very worst, and where crime is confessed to have produced them, being 1 in 16.8, had here, legitimate and natural, reached the frightful ratio of 1 in 8.1;

That the fœtal deaths, as compared with the total mortality, had increased from 1 in 37, in 1805, to 1 in 13, in 1855;

That the reported early abortions, of which the greater number of course escape registry, bear the ratio to the living births of 1 in 40.4, while elsewhere they are only 1 in 78.5;

And finally, that early abortions, bearing the proportion to the still-births at the full time of 1 in 10.2, in 1846, had increased to 1 in 4.02, in 1856.

It must be borne in mind that these statistics are positive, proving the existence of a certain number of pregnancies abruptly terminated. They cannot therefore be controverted by any argument regarding means for the prevention of pregnancy, no matter to what extent these may be used. Nor should it be forgotten that for every registered premature birth or abortion, innumerable ones occur that are never recorded.

Almost doubling therefore, as does New York, the worst of those fearful ratios of fœtal mortality existing in Europe, it is not strange that our metropolis has been held up, even by a Parisian, to the execration of the world. “On le voit (l’avortement)” says Tardieu, “en Amérique, dans une grande cìté comme New York, constituer une industrie véritable et non poursuivie.”

In this description of New York, we have that of the country. The relative annual increase of the population existing throughout America, depending as this does chiefly on immigration, must not mislead us. The ratio of fœtal death in the metropolis surpasses what has ever been dreamed to obtain even in old countries, where innumerable more legitimate causes for it might be thought to exist. At Boston, which for morals is allowed to compare favorably with any city of its size in the Union, “undoubtedly more than a hundred still-births yearly escape being recorded, a large proportion of which, no doubt, result from criminal abortion.” And our public prints, far and wide, even in the smaller towns and villages, constantly chronicle deaths from the commission of the crime.

In the State of Massachusetts at large, it has been found of late years that “the increase of the population, or the excess of the births over the deaths, has been wholly of those of recent foreign origin;” this in 1850. In 1853 “it is evident that the births within the Commonwealth, with the usual increase, have resulted in favor of foreign parents in an increased ratio.” In other words, it is found that in so far as depends upon the American and native element, and in the absence of the existing immigration from abroad, the population of Massachusetts is stationary or decreasing.