remedy for the great and growing evil which confronts us to-day is
suggested, not to avenge but to protect society, and in profound pity
for the classes who are a burden to themselves, as well as to those who
have to tend and support them.

The problem of the unfit is not new. The burden of supporting those
unable to support themselves has been keenly felt in all ages and among
all peoples.

The ancients realized the danger and the burden, but found no difficulty
when the stress became acute in enacting that all infants should be
examined and the defective despatched.

To come nearer home, Boeltius tells us, that, "in old times when a Scot
was affected with any hereditary disease their sons were emasculated,
their daughters banished, and if any female affected with such disease
were pregnant, she was to be burned alive."

Aristotle declared (Politics Book II, p. 40) that "neglect of this
subject is a never failing cause of poverty, and poverty is the parent
of revolution and crime," and he advocated habitual abortion as one
remedy against over-population. The combined wisdom of the Greeks found
no better method of keeping population well within the limits of the
State's power to support its members than abortion, and the exposure of
infants.

Since Aristotle's time abortion has been largely practised by civilized
nations. Mutilation and infibulation of females have been practised by
savages with the same end in view, while vasectomy, orchotomy, and
ovariotomy, have had their avowed advocates in our own time.