If every child is sacred, every mother is sacred. If every child is to
be cared for, every mother must be cared for. It is true that we may
make experiment with devices for superseding the mother. Man has
impudent assurance enough for anything, and if Nature has been working
at the perfection of an instrument for her purpose during a few score
million years--an instrument such as the mammalian mother, for
instance--man is quite prepared to invent social devices, such as the
incubator, the _creche_, the infant milk _depot_, and so forth; not
merely to make the best of a bad case when the mother fails, but to
supersede the mother altogether directly the baby is born. Such cases,
except in the last resort, are more foolish than words can say. We have
to save our children; we can only do so effectively through the
naturally appointed means for saving children, which is motherhood. The
rights of mothers follow as a necessary consequence from our first
principle, which was the rights of children. Because every child must
be protected, every mother must be protected, if not in one way, in
another.
The State may not be able to afford this. The necessities of existence
may be so difficult to obtain, not to mention for a moment such luxuries
as alcohol and motor-cars and warships and fine clothes and art, and so
forth, that no arrangements for the support of motherhood can be made.
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