Deliberate interventions against conception form an alternative to human life. In addition to that, there exists partial deliberate intervention against conception, as well as against breast-feeding. All these are links in a chain of actions in contradiction to natural life, which is tantamount to murder. For a woman to kill herself in order not to conceive, deliver and breast-feed is within the realm of deliberate, artificial interventions, in contradiction with the nature of life epitomized by marriage, conception, breast-feeding, and maternity. They differ only in degree.
To dispense with the natural role of woman in maternity—nurseries replacing mothers—is a start in dispensing with the human society and transforming it into a merely biological society with an artificial way of life. To separate children from their mothers and to cram them into nurseries is a process by which they are transformed into something very close to chicks, for nurseries are similar to poultry farms into which chicks are crammed after they are hatched. Nothing else would be as appropriate and suitable to the human being and his dignity as natural motherhood. Children should be raised by their mothers in a family where the true principles of motherhood, fatherhood and comradeship of brothers and sisters prevail, and not in an institution resembling a poultry farm. Even poultry, like the rest of the members of the animal kingdom, need motherhood as a natural phase. Therefore, breeding them on farms similar to nurseries is against their natural growth. Even their meat is artificial rather than natural. Meat from mechanized poultry farms is not tasty and may not be nourishing because the chicks are not naturally bred and are not raised in the protective shade of natural motherhood. The meat of wild birds is more tasty and nourishing because they are naturally fed. As for children who have neither family nor shelter, society is their guardian, and only for them, should society establish nurseries and related institutions. It is better for them to be taken care of by society rather than by individuals who are not their parents.
If a test were carried out to discover whether the natural propensity of the child is towards its mother or the nursery. the child would opt for the mother and not the nursery. Since the natural tendency of a child is towards its mother, she is the natural and proper person to give the child the protection of nursing. Sending a child to a nursery in place of its mother is coercive and oppressive and against its free and natural tendencies.
Natural growth for all living things is free and healthy growth. To substitute a nursery for a mother is coercive action against free and sound growth. Children who are shipped off to a nursery are consigned compulsorily or by exploitation and simple-mindedness. They are driven to nurseries purely by materialistic, and not by social, considerations. If coercion and childish simple-mindedness were removed, they would certainly reject the nursery and cling to their mothers. The only justification for such an unnatural and inhuman process is the fact that the woman is in a position unsuitable to her nature, i.e., she is compelled to perform duties which are unsocial and anti-motherhood.
A woman, whose created nature has assigned to her a natural role different from that of man, must be in an appropriate position to perform her natural role.
Motherhood is the female’s function, not the male’s. Consequently, it is unnatural to separate children from their mothers. Any attempt to take children away from their mothers is coercion, oppression and dictatorship. The mother who abandons her maternity contradicts her natural role in life. She must be provided with her rights, and with conditions which are non-coercive, unoppressive and appropriate to her natural role. She can then fulfill her natural role under natural conditions. If the woman is forced to abandon her natural role regarding conception and maternity, she falls victim to coercion and tyranny. A woman who needs work that renders her unable to perform her natural function is not free and is compelled to work by need, and “in need, freedom is latent”.
Among suitable and even essential conditions which enable women to perform their natural role, which differs from that of men, are those very conditions which are proper for a human being who is incapacitated and burdened with pregnancy. Bearing another human being in her womb lessens her physical ability. It is unjust to place such a woman, in this stage of maternity, into circumstances of physical work incompatible with her condition. For pregnant women to perform such physical work is tantamount to punishment for their betrayal of their maternal role; it is the tax they pay for entering the realm of men, which is naturally alien to their own.
The belief, even if it is held by a woman, that she carries out physical labour of her own accord, is not, in fact, true. She performs the physical work only because a harsh materialistic society has placed her (without her being directly aware of it) into coercive circumstances. She has no alternative but to submit to the conditions of that society, even though she may think that she works of her own accord. In fact, the alleged basis that “there is no difference in any way between men and women”, deprives woman of her freedom.
The phrase “in any way” is a monstrous deception. This idea will destroy the appropriate and necessary conditions which constitute the privilege which women ought to enjoy apart from men in accordance with their distinctive nature, and upon which their natural role in life is based.
To demand equality between man and woman in carrying heavy weights while the woman is pregnant is unjust and cruel. To demand equality between them in fasting and hardship while she is breast-feeding is unjust and cruel. To demand equality between them in any dirty work which stains her beauty and detracts from her femininity is unjust and cruel. Education that leads to work unsuitable for her nature is unjust and cruel as well.
There is no difference between men and women in all that concerns humanity. None of them should marry the other against his or her will, or divorce without a just trial or mutual agreement. Neither should a woman remarry without such agreement or divorce; nor a man without divorce or consent. The woman is the owner of the house because it is one of the suitable and necessary conditions for a woman who menstruates, conceives, and cares for her children. The female is the owner of the maternity shelter, which is the house. Even in the animal world, which differs in many ways from that of the humans, and where maternity is also a duty according to nature, it is coercive to deprive the female of her shelter and the offspring of their mother.
Woman is female. Being female means she has a biological nature that is different from that of the male. The female’s biological nature, differing as it does from that of the males, has imparted to women characteristics different from those of men in form and in essence. A woman’s anatomy is different from that of a man’s just as the female differs in plants and animals. This is a natural and incontrovertible fact. In the animal and plant kingdoms, the male is naturally created strong and aggressive, while the female is created beautiful and gentle. These are natural and eternal characteristics innate to living creatures, whether they are called human beings, animals or plants.
In view of his different nature and in line with the laws of nature, the male has played the role of the strong and striving not by design, but simply because he is created that way. The female has played the role of the beautiful and the gentle involuntarily because she was created so. This natural rule is just, partly because it is natural, and partly because it is the basic rule for freedom. All living creatures are created free and any interference with that freedom is coercion. Not to adhere to these natural roles and to lack concern for their limits amounts to a wanton act of corruption against the values of life itself. Nature has been designed to be in harmony with the inevitability of life, from what is being to what will become. The living creature is a being who inevitably lives until it is dead. Existence between the beginning and the end of life is based on a natural law, without choice or compulsion. It is natural. It is natural freedom.