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

the matter. Or, from another point of view, it may be said that the man who adopts these practices is simply using his wife as he would use a prostitute, as indeed was said long ago by St. Thomas Aquinas. [72] The excuse offered for illicit sexual intercourse is not usually pleasure, but that the sex impulse is irresistible: and the same argument is used for conjugal union with prevention. In both cases the natural result of union is not desired, and positive means are taken to prevent it.

And what of the results on the mutual love, if an old-fashioned word be not now out of place, and on the self-respect of two people so associated? Birth control cannot make for happiness, because it means that mutual love is at the mercy of an animal instinct, neither satisfied nor denied. It is an old truth that those who seek happiness for itself never find it. And yet the advocates of birth control have the temerity to claim that these practices lead to happiness. I presume that of the bliss following marriage with contraceptives the crowded lists of our divorce courts are an index. The marriage bond is weakened when a common lasting interest in the care of children is replaced by transient sexual excitement. Once pregnancy is abolished there is no natural check on the sexual passions of husband or wife, for they have learnt how sexual desire may be gratified without the pain, publicity, and responsibility of having children. In the experience of the world marriages based merely on passion are seldom happy, and artificial birth control means passion uncontrolled by nature. These methods are not practised by nations such as Ireland and Spain, who accept the moral rule of the natural law expressed in God’s commandments and sanctioned by His judgments; and no man who has ever lived in these countries could truthfully maintain that the people there, on whom the burdens of marriage press as elsewhere, are in reality anxious to obtain facilities for divorce. On the other hand, there are many who allege that the people of England are shouting out for greater facilities for divorce than they now possess. At any rate, it is obvious enough that there are those amongst us who are straining every nerve to force such facilities upon them.

 

Section 4. AN INSULT TO TRUE WOMANHOOD

It has been said that patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel; and apparently chivalry is the last refuge of a fool. Some of the advocates of birth control who have never thought the matter out, either passionately or dispassionately, claim to speak on behalf of women. They protest that “many women of the educated classes revolt against the drudgery, anxieties, inconveniences, disease, and disfigurements which attend the yearly child-bearing advocated by the moralist.” [73]

What moralist? Who ever said it? Again, they plead for women who “revolt” from the “disfigurement” of the gestation period. The great artist Botticelli did not think this was disfigurement. What true women do? Are they not those of whom Kipling writes, “as pale and as stale as a bone”? And, if so, are these unworthy specimens of their sex worth tears? The vast majority of women bear the discomforts of gestation and the actual perils and pangs of birth with exemplary fortitude: and it is a gross slander for anyone to maintain that a few cowardly and degenerate individuals really represent that devoted sex. But these writers are indeed well out of the ruck of ordinary humanity, because they tell us that “whatever the means employed, and whether righteous or not, the propensity to limit the highest form of life operates silently and steadily amongst the more thoughtful members of all civilized countries,” and yet add that “it is not perhaps good taste to consider the means employed to this end.” While they thus approve and commend the practice of birth control as natural to “the more thoughtful members,” they nevertheless question the “good taste” of discussing the very methods of which they approve, even in the columns of a medical journal! Again, they tell us that “assuredly continence is not, and never will be, the principal” method. That may be possibly true, so long as Christianity is more professed than practised; God knows we are all lacking enough in self-control. And yet throughout the ages moralists have preached the advantages of self-control, and we ordinary men and women know that we could do better, and that others who have gone before us have done better; but it is the self-styled “thoughtful members” who proclaim to the world that self-control in matters of sex is an impossibility, and therefore not to be even attempted. They are no common people—these epicureans, selfish even in their refinement. In addition to losing their morals, they have certainly lost their wits.

 

Section 5. A DEGRADATION OF THE FEMALE SEX

In the Neo-Malthusian propaganda there is yet another fact which—should be seized by every married woman, because it is a clear indication of a tendency to reduce women to degrading subjection. No recommendations of limited intercourse or of self-restraint according to the dictates of reason or of affection are to be found in the writings of birth controllers. Unrestrained indulgence, without the risk of consequences, is their motto. To this end they advocate certain contraceptive methods, and the reader should note that these methods require precautions to be taken solely by the woman. If she fails to take these precautions, or if the precautions themselves fail, all responsibility for the occurrence of conception rests on her alone; because her Malthusian masters have decided that she alone is to be, made responsible for preventing the natural or possible consequences of intercourse. Why? That is a very interesting question, and one to which a leading Neo-Malthusian has given the answer.

In 1854 there was published, Physical, Sexual and Natural Religion: by a Graduate of Medicine. In the third edition the title was altered to The Elements of Social Science, and the author’s pseudonym to A Doctor of Medicine. This book, which contains over 600 pages of small type, may be truthfully described as the Bible of Neo-Malthusians, and includes, under the curious heading Sexual Religion, a popular account of all venereal and other diseases of sex. In the Preface to the first edition, [74] the anonymous author states: “Had it not been the fear of causing pain to a relation, I should have felt it my duty to put my name to this work; in order that any censure passed upon it should fall upon myself alone.” The relation appears to have had a long life, because anonymity was preserved for fifty years, presumably out of respect for his, or her, feelings: and he, or she, must have lived as long as the author, who died in 1904 at the age of seventy-eight; because the author’s name was not revealed until a posthumous edition, the thirty-fifth, appeared in 1905, from which we learn that the book was written by the late Dr. George Drysdale, brother of the first President of the Malthusian League, and uncle of the present incumbent. The last edition, in recompense for its smudgy type, contains a most welcome announcement by the publisher:

 

“PUBLISHER’S NOTE.—… It is due alike to the reader and the publisher

to explain why the present edition is printed (in the main) from

stereotypes that have seen fifty years’ service. The cost of resetting

the work would be prohibitive on the basis of present (and probable

future) sales. To some extent the plates have been repaired; but such

an expedient can do no more than remove the worse causes of offence.”

But the fact with which I am at present concerned is that in every edition all contraceptive methods that apply to the male are condemned for the following reasons:

 

“The first of these modes [_coitus interruptus_] is physically

injurious, and is apt to produce nervous disorder and sexual

enfeeblement and congestion, from the sudden interruption it gives to

the venereal act, whose pleasure moreover it interferes with. The

second, namely the sheath, dulls the enjoyment, and frequently

produces impotence in the man and disgust in both parties; so that it

also is injurious” (p. 349)…. “Any preventive means, to be

satisfactory, must be used by the woman, as _it spoils the passion and

the impulsiveness_ of the venereal act _if the man have to think of

them_” (p. 350).

The italics are mine, but the following comments are by a woman, who was moreover the first woman to qualify in medicine—the late Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell.

 

“Here, in this chief teacher of the Neo-Malthusians, the cloven foot is

fully revealed. This popular author, who in many parts of his book

denounces marriage as the enslavement of men and women, who sneers at

continence, and rages at Christianity as a vanishing superstition—all

under a special pretence of benevolence and desire for the advancement

of the human race, here clearly, shows what he is aiming at, and what

his doctrines lead to. Male sexual pleasure must not be interfered

with, male lust may be indulged in to any extent that pleasure demands,

but woman must take the entire responsibility, that male indulgence be

not disturbed by any inconvenient claims from paternity. Whatever

consequences ensue the woman is to blame, and must bear the whole

responsibility.

 

“A doctrine more diabolical in its theory and more destructive in its

practical consequences has never been invented. This is the doctrine of

Neo-Malthusianism.” [75]

 

Section 6. SPECIALLY HURTFUL TO THE POOR

(a) Affecting the Young

There are three special and peculiar evils that attend the teaching of birth control amongst the poor. Of the first a doctor has written as follows:

 

“Morally, the doctrine is indefensible—it follows the line of least

resistance, and sacrifices the spirit to the flesh. Materially, it is

fraught with grave danger to the home and to our national existence. It

is proposed to disseminate a knowledge of contraceptive methods

throughout the overcrowded homes of the ill-fed, ill-clad poor. Now it

is in these homes that the moral sense has already but little chance of

development, where the child of eight or ten already knows far more

than is good for the health of either body or mind, and, though we may

succeed in reducing the size of the family, yet the means we employ

will militate against the raising of the moral tone of the household,

and the children will not be any less precocious than before.” [76]

That danger is ignored by the advocates of birth-control. “But he that shall scandalise one of these little ones that believe in Me, it were better for, him that a mill-stone were hanged about his neck, and that he were drowned in the depth, of the sea.” [77]

(b) Exposing the Poor to Experiment

Secondly, the ordinary decent instincts of the poor are against these practices, and indeed they have used them less than any other class. But, owing to their poverty, lack of learning, and helplessness, the poor are the natural victims of those who seek to make experiments on their fellows. In the midst of a London slum a woman, who is a doctor of German philosophy (Munich), has opened a Birth Control Clinic, where working women are instructed in a method of contraception described by Professor McIlroy as “the most harmful method of which I have had experience.” [78] When we remember that millions are being spent by the Ministry of Health and by Local Authorities—on pure milk for necessitous expectant and nursing mothers, on Maternity Clinics to guard the health of mothers before and after childbirth, for the provision of skilled midwives, and on Infant Welfare Centres—all for the single purpose of bringing healthy children into our midst, it is truly amazing that this monstrous campaign of birth control