Plain Facts for Old and Young by John Harvey Kellogg

2. Why should so vile a crime as fornication be taken under legal

protection more than stealing or the lowest forms of gambling? Is it not a lesser crime against human nature to rob a man of his money by theft or by deceit and trickery than to snatch from him at one fell swoop his health, his virtue, and his peace of mind? Why not as well have laws to regulate burglary and assassination, allowing the perpetrators of those crimes to ply their chosen avocations with impunity under certain prescribed restrictions; if robbery, for instance, requiring the thief to leave his victim money enough to make his escape to another country; or, if murder, directing the assassin to allow his intended victim time to repeat a sufficient number of _Ave Marias_ to insure his safe transit through purgatory or to pay a priest for doing the same? Such a course would not be inconsistent with the policy which legalizes that infamous traffic in human souls, prostitution.