However, these babies
are but a small minority and at least ninety-nine out of a hundred
should survive. Not one baby born physically fit would die if
intelligently cared for, and the fact that each year we lose over
one-fourth million infants under one year of age in the United States is
an indictment of our lives and intelligence, and a challenge to better
our ways.
Every child that is brought into the world should be given an
opportunity to live. This is far from the case today. Children are so
handicapped that they are stunted in body and blunted in mind, if they
survive.
Suppose that every ten years an army of 4,250,000 men and women between
the ages of twenty and thirty were destroyed at one time in this
country! The indignation, sorrow and horror would be so great that a
means would soon be found to end the periodic slaughter.
But we allow this many children under ten to be destroyed every ten
years. The slaughter of the innocents does not bring forth much protest,
because we are so used to it, and the babies go one by one, all over the
country. The procession to the grave gives rise to this thought: "The
little one is better off.
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