Birth Control - Halliday G. Sutherland (summer reading list .TXT) 📗

but the more common

occurrence is that she remains fairly well until the time of the change

of life, when she frequently suffers more, on the nervous side, than

does the woman who has lived a natural married life.”

The late Dr. F.W. Taylor, President of the British Gynaecological Society, wrote as follows in 1904:

 

“Artificial prevention is an evil and a disgrace. The immorality of it,

the degradation of succeeding generations by it, their domination or

subjection by strangers who are stronger because they have not given

way to it, the curses that must assuredly follow the parents of

decadence who started it,—all of this needs to be brought home to the

minds of those who have thoughtlessly or ignorantly accepted it, for it

is to this undoubtedly that we have to attribute not only the

diminishing birthrate, but the diminishing value of our population.

 

“It would be strange indeed if so unnatural a practice, one so

destructive of the best life of the nation, should bring no danger or

disease in its wake, and I am convinced, after many years of

observation, that both sudden danger and chronic disease may be

produced by the methods of prevention very generally employed…. The

natural deduction is that the artificial production of modern times,

the relatively sterile marriage, is an evil thing, even to the

individuals primarily concerned, injurious not only to the race, but to

those who accept it.”

That was the opinion of a distinguished gynaecologist, who also happened to be a Christian. The reader may protest that the latter fact is entirely irrelevant to my argument, and that the value of a man’s observations concerning disease is to be judged by his skill and experience as a physician, and not by his religious beliefs. A most reasonable statement. Unhappily, the Neo-Malthusians think otherwise. They would have us believe that because this man was a Christian his opinion, as a gynaecologist, is worthless. C.V. Drysdale, O.B.E., D. Sc., after quoting Dr. Taylor’s views, adds the following foot-note:

 

“I have since learnt that Dr. Taylor was a very earnest Christian, and

the author of several sacred hymns and of a pious work, _The Coming of

the Saints_.” [68]

Furthermore, in 1905, the South-Western Branch of the British Medical Association passed the following resolution:

 

“That this Branch is of opinion that the growing use of contraceptives

and ecbolics is fraught with great danger both to the individual and to

the race. That this Branch is of opinion that the advertisements and

sale of such appliances and substances, as well as the publication and

dissemination of literature relating thereto, should be made a penal

offence.” [69]

 

Section 2. A SCANDALOUS SUGGESTION

The foregoing opinions are very distasteful to Neo-Malthusians, and these people, being unable apparently to give a reasoned answer, do not hesitate to suggest that medical opposition, when not due to religious bias, is certainly due to mercenary motives.

 

“As the Church has a vested interest in souls, so the medical

profession has a vested interest in bodies. Birth is a source of

revenue, direct and indirect. It means maternity fees first; it

generally presupposes preliminary medical treatment of the expectant

mother; and it provides a new human being to be a patient to some

member of the profession, humanly certain to have its share of

infantile diseases, and likely, if it survives them, to produce

children of its own before the final death-bed attendance is

reached.” [70]

That scandalous suggestion has recently been repeated by the President of the Society for Constructive Birth Control and Racial Progress under the following circumstances. On October 31, 1921, the Sussex Daily News published the following paragraph from its London correspondent.

 

“BIRTH CONTROL

 

“Reverberations of Lord Dawson’s recent sensational address to the

Church Congress on birth control are still being felt as well in

medical as in clerical circles. Indeed, the subject has been discussed

by the lawyers at Gray’s Inn. The London Association of the Medical

Women’s Federation had so animated a discussion on it that it was

decided to continue it at the next meeting. It is quite evident that

Lord Dawson did not speak for a united medical profession. Indeed,

quite a number of doctors of all creeds are attacking the new Birth

Control Society. A London physician has a pamphlet on the subject in

the Press, and the controversy rages fiercely in the neighbourhood of

‘birth-control’ clinics. Much is likely to be made of the example of

France, where the revolt against the practices advocated is now in full

swing, and strong legal measures have been taken and are in

contemplation. French medical opinion is said to be very pronounced on

the subject, and it has, of course, a great deal of clinical experience

to back it.”

On November 8, a second paragraph appeared:

 

“BIRTH CONTROL

 

“My remark recently that ‘a number of doctors of all creeds are

attacking the new Birth-Control Society’ has been challenged by the

hon. secretary of the body in question, who observes that I am

misinformed. I must adhere to my statement, which was a record of

personal observation. Many doctors have spoken to me on the subject,

and their opinions on the ethics of birth control differ widely; but I

can only remember one who did not attack this particular society. The

secretary suggests that I am confusing what his society advocates with

something else. As a matter of fact, the whole question of birth

control has been discussed more than once by medical bodies. A doctor

who attended one such discussion shortly after the opening of the

clinic in Holloway told me that, while there was division of opinion on

the general subject, the feeling of the meeting was overwhelming

against the particular teaching given at the clinic, as undesirable and

actively mischievous. The subject is controversial, and I profess to do

no more than record such opinions as are current.”

On November 17 the Sussex Daily News published the following letter:

 

“CONSTRUCTIVE BIRTH CONTROL

 

“Sir,—Your recent paragraph of ‘opinions’ about the Mothers’ Clinic

and the Society for Constructive Birth Control and Racial Progress is

not only extremely unrepresentative, but grossly misleading. Your

writer says that he can only remember one doctor who did not attack

this particular society. This implies that the medical profession is

against it, which is absolutely untrue, as is quite evident from the

fact that we have three of the most distinguished medical men in Great

Britain on our list of Vice-Presidents; four others, also very

distinguished, on our Research Committee; and that Dr. E.B. Turner, in

a Press interview after the recent Church Congress, singled out

Constructive Birth Control as the only ‘Control’ which was not

mischievous.

 

“_That there may be medical men who do not approve of birth control is

natural, when one remembers that a doctor has to make his living, and

can do so more easily when women are ailing with incessant pregnancies

than when they maintain themselves in good health by only having

children when fitted to do so. Opinions of medicals, therefore, must be

sifted. The best doctors are with us; the self-seeking and the biassed

may be against us_.

 

“Details about the society, including the manifesto signed by a series

of the most distinguished persons, can be obtained on application to

the Honorary Secretary, at … London, N.19.—Yours, etc.

 

“MARIE C. STOPES,

“President Society for Constructive and Racial Progress.”

The italics are mine, and they draw attention to a disgraceful statement concerning the medical profession. As the reader is aware, certain members of our profession approve of artificial birth control. What, I ask, would be the opinion of the general public, and of my friends, if I were so distraught as to suggest that these men approved of birth control because they had a financial interest in the sale of contraceptives? That suggestion would be as reckless and as wicked as the statement made by Dr. Marie C. Stopes. In the British Medical Journal of November 26 I quoted, without comment, the above italicised paragraph as her opinion of the medical profession, and on December 10 the following reply from the lady appeared:

 

“Your two correspondents, Dr. Halliday Sutherland and Dr. Binnie

Dunlop, by quoting paragraphs without their full context, appear to

lend support to views which by implication are, to some extent,

detrimental to my own. This method of controversy has never appealed to

me, but in the interests of the society with which I am associated, I

must be allowed to answer the implications. The paragraph quoted by Dr.

Sutherland is not, as would appear from his letter, a simple opinion of

mine on the medical profession, but was written in reply to a rather

scurrilous paragraph so worded as to lead the public to believe that

the medical profession as a whole was against the Society for

Constructive Birth Control and Racial Progress. My answer, which

appeared not only in the papers quoted but in others, contained the

following statement: ‘We have three of the most distinguished medical

men in Great Britain on our list of Vice-Presidents; four others, also

very distinguished, on our Research Committee.’ Reading these words

before the paragraph your correspondent quotes, and taking all in

conjunction with an attack implying that the entire medical profession

was against us, it is obvious that the position is rather different

from what readers of Dr. Sutherland’s letter in your issue of November

26 might suppose.”

It will be noted that Dr. Stopes does not withdraw but attempts to justify her scandalous suggestion by stating, firstly, that the full context of her letter was not quoted by me, and secondly, that her original letter was written “in reply to a rather scurrilous paragraph.”

As I have now quoted in full her original letter, excepting the address of her society, and the two paragraphs from the Sussex Daily News, my readers may form their own judgment on the following points: Is it possible to maintain that the whole context of her original letter puts a different complexion on her remarks concerning the medical profession? Can either of the paragraphs from the Sussex Daily News be truthfully described as “rather scurrilous,” or are they fair comment on a matter of public interest? Moreover, even if a daily paper had published a misleading paragraph about this society, surely that is not a valid reason why its President should make a malignant attack, not on journalists, but on the medical profession?

 

Section 3. A CAUSE OF UNHAPPINESS IN MARRIAGE

Nor does birth control lead to happiness in marriage. On the contrary, experience shows that the practice is injurious not only to the bodies but also to the minds of men and women. As no method of contraception is infallible, the wife who allows or adopts it may find herself in the truly horrible position of being secretly or openly suspected of infidelity. Again, when a family has been limited to one or two children and these die, the parents may find themselves solitary and childless in old age; and mothers thus bereaved are often the victims of profound and lasting melancholy. The mother of a large family has her worries, many of them not due to her children, but to the social evils of our time: and yet she is less to be pitied than the woman who is losing her beauty after a fevered life of, vanity and self-indulgence, and who has no one to love her, not even a child.

Moreover, these practices have an influence on the relation between husband and wife, on their emotions towards each other and towards the whole sexual nisus. Mr. Bernard Shaw recently stated [71] that when people adopt methods of birth control they are engaging, not in sexual intercourse, but in reciprocal masturbation.

That is the plain truth of