Today’s Victorians
Back in the late 1800’s in Victorian England an unwed mother was treated as a pariah. The chambermaid who was seduced by the master of the house… the shop girl seduced by the charming sailor, or the society debutant seduced by the handsome cad with a title, they were all considered vile fallen women by polite society. The wealthy in this situation might move abroad, concoct some story about being a widow and start anew in the south of France perhaps. The poor had no such options.
Of course no pregnant unmarried woman could continue to work in public. No proper home would tolerate such a moral failure as a cook or parlourmaid. No shop would allow a fallen woman to serve their decent customers and no decent customer would enter a shop that did. So what these girls do? Where did they give birth? There was no public hospital that would accept them. No emergency room to go to when labor began. They gave birth in filthy rooms in cheap tenements or even in alleyways.
There were a couple of birthing hospitals run by nuns but these were grim establishments were the pregnant women were treated like criminals, made to pray and beg forgiveness incessantly during their stay. They were told how bad they had been and forced to work until labor pains made it impossible. Such places were but marginally better than a dirty tenement room to have a baby in.
When some kind society women had the idea to open a birthing hospital for such women, a clean place, staffed by midwives and nurses, a place where unwed mothers could give birth without being judged or mistreated they met with fierce opposition from society. “You are simply encouraging this sort of immoral behavior” they were told. “If these women are offered a free place such as you propose to give birth to their bastards what’s to prevent them from repeating their vile behavior? What’s to prevent other women, seeing your helping arms awaiting, from emulating them? It will be the end of morality in England.”
It took many years for such places to put together the funding needed to operate. Unwed mothers were thought to be solely at fault for their wanton behavior. Much convincing of bankers and the wealthy that to be an unwed mother meant being shunned by polite society. It promised slim prospects for marriage in the future. Employment for a woman with a child was almost impossible. It meant a life of hardship far beyond the hardships typically endured by the working classes of the time. Providing a few days of decent treatment for a woman giving birth was hardly going to be sufficient enticement to others to get pregnant out of wedlock.
So why am I telling you about pregnant shop girls in Victorian England? A very similar battle rages today. People, dealing with the travails of life (poverty, unfaithful spouses, massive growth in the prison population, racism, and, of course, in many cases, plain old stupidity ) become addicted to heroin. Society sees to it that they have to buy their heroin from unlicensed sources on the street. That heroin is unregulated as to purity or potency and could be cut with anything from plaster dust to rat poison. Death from impurities or just excessive potency is relatively common. Clean needles are often unobtainable resulting in the spread of diseases ranging from minor skin infections to Hepatitis, to AIDS. As the dosage is unregulated consciousness is not always possible so employment is impossible. And of course there is always the threat of arrest and incarceration waiting around every corner. Not a pleasant way of life.
When some caring people come along and talk about ways to remove some of the most serious problems that plague drug addicts (and cost the rest of society a fortune to boot) they are told such measures will make drug addiction more popular. “If you remove the threat of AIDS by giving addicts clean needles you make it more acceptable to be an addict” they say. “If you provide free needles others will get them, fill them with heroin and get addicted.” Yes… the life of an impoverished heroin addict is so appealing that without the threat of contracting AIDS millions would succumb… Sure. “Providing a clean injection room where IV drug users could get clean needles and shoot up in sterile surroundings and talk to healthcare professionals about their health, perhaps even enter treatment voluntarily would remove all the stigma of drug addiction. It would become an attractive lifestyle to others” Uh huh…
Here we are one hundred plus years down the road and Victorian morality is still with us.
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