 Wright was one of a few men who published books in the mid-nineteenth century advocating the wife's control of marital relations, his first being "Marriage and Parentage; Or, The Reproductive Element in Man, as a Means to His Elevation and Happiness", published in 1854, and his second, "The Unwelcome Child; Or, The Crime of an Undesigned and Undesired Child", published in 1858.Both books promoted sexual responsibility within marriage and argued that because women bore the consequences of the sexual act, wives should have the right to decline sexual relations.In speeches during the summer of 1865, Wright was also an advocate of woman suffrage, and immediately after the Civil War was one of the early advocates of "universal suffrage," – extending the vote "without regard to color or to sex."