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

and I put it in the form of a question. Can any intelligent man or woman, Catholic, Protestant, or rationalist, maintain that Lord Dawson has given a fair, a true, or an honest statement of the teaching of the Church of England? Moreover, it is past all understanding how a gross libel on Anglican doctrine has been overlooked by those most concerned. The address is actually hailed as “wise, bold, and humane in the highest sense of the word” by The Spectator, [118] and that amazing journal, “expert as ever in making the worse appear the better cause in a way that appeals to clergymen,” goes on to say: “Lord Dawson fearlessly and plainly opposed the teachings of the Roman Church and the alleged teachings of the Anglican.”

Having by a travesty of truth created a false theological bogey, bearing little resemblance either to Catholic or to Anglican teaching, Lord Dawson proceeds to demolish his own creation by a somewhat boisterous eulogy of sex-love. Now sex-love is an instinct and involves no question of good or evil apart from the circumstances in which it is either gratified or denied; but, in view of the freedom with which Lord Dawson discussed this topic, it is only right to note that it was left to the Rev. R.J. Campbell to add to the gaiety of nations by his subsequent protest that the Marriage Service “contains expressions which are offensive to modern delicacy of feeling.”

That protest is also a first-rate example of the anarchical state of the modern mind. The Rev. R.J. Campbell is a modern mind, so is Mr. George Bernard Shaw; but the latter refers to “the sober decency, earnestness, and authority” [119] of those very passages to which the former objects.

Lord Dawson’s eulogy of sexual intercourse was but a prelude to his plea for the use of contraceptives:

 

“I will next consider Artificial Control. The forces in modern life

which make for birth control are so strong that only convincing reasons

will make people desist from it. It is said to be unnatural and

intrinsically immoral. This word ‘unnatural’ perplexes me. Why?

Civilisation involves the chaining of natural forces and their

conversion to man’s will and uses. Much of medicine and surgery

consists of means to overcome nature.”

That paragraph illustrates precisely the confused use of the word “natural,” which I have already criticised (p. 124). Lord Dawson says he is perplexed, and I agree with him. Civilisation, he says, involves the conversion of natural forces to man’s will. So does every crime. Is that any defence of crime? Even if physical nature be described as non-moral, that description cannot be applied to the inward nature of will and conscience. That I will an act may show it is in accordance with nature in a certain sense, but the fact of its being in accordance with physical nature does not justify my act. Does Lord Dawson agree? Or does he think that any action in accordance with the physical laws of nature, which means any action whatsoever, is justified; and does he approve therefore of mere moral anarchy? His confusion of thought concerning the use of the word “natural” is followed by the inevitable sequence of false analogies:

 

“When anaesthetics were first used at childbirth there was an outcry

on the part of many worthy and religious people that their use under

such circumstances was unnatural and wicked, because God meant woman to

suffer the struggles and pains of childbirth. Now we all admit it is

right to control the process of childbirth, and to save the mother as

much pain as possible. It is no more unnatural to control conception by

artificial means than to control childbirth by artificial means.

Surely the whole question turns on whether these artificial means are

for the good or harm of the individual and the community.

 

“Generally speaking, birth control before the first child is

inadvisable. On the other hand, the justifiable use of birth control

would seem to be to limit the number of children when such is

desirable, and to spread out their arrival in such a way as to serve

their true interests and those of their home.

 

“Once more, careful distinction needs to be made between the use and

the bad effects of the abuse of birth control. That its abuse produces

grave harm I fully agree—harm to parents, to families, and to the

nation. But abuse is not a just condemnation of legitimate use.

Over-eating, over-drinking, over-smoking, over-sleeping, overwork do

not carry condemnation of eating, drinking, smoking, sleeping, work.”

These long extracts are here quoted because, as The Spectator has remarked, “an attempt at a detailed summary might destroy the careful balance which is essential to Lord Dawson’s purpose.” It might indeed; and many a true word is written inadvertently and despite the wisdom of the serpent. As Lord Dawson believes that Malthusian practice is not of necessity sinful, and as he is urging the Church to remove a ban on that practice, it is necessary for him to prove in the first place that his opinion is right and that the teaching of the Church is wrong. Elsewhere in these pages I have stated the reasons why Christian morality brands the act of artificial birth control as intrinsically a sin, a malum in se, and those reasons have never been disproved by Lord Dawson or by anyone. His comparison between the use of contraceptives and eating or drinking is a false analogy. Eating is a natural act, not in itself sinful, whereas the use of contraceptives is an unnatural act, in itself a sin. The extent to which artificial birth control is practised neither increases nor diminishes the sinful nature of the act, but merely indicates the number of times the same sin is committed. Lord Dawson admits the danger of Neo-Malthusian methods being carried to excess, and counsels that these practices be used in moderation; but is it likely that those who have discarded the teaching of a Church and the dictates of the moral law will be seriously influenced by what he calls “an appeal to patriotism”?

Now there is one appeal to patriotism which Lord Dawson could have made but did not make. He might have pleaded that for the sake of the nation all attempts at unnatural birth control amongst the wealthier and more leisured citizens should be abandoned forthwith, and that the lawful form should be confined to those few cases where limitation of the family is justified on genuine medical grounds. But he refrained from making that appeal, and his plea for the use of contraceptives in moderation is more likely to be quoted with approval in the boudoirs of Mayfair than in humbler homes.

Lord Dawson’s grave error in failing to anticipate the inevitable consequences of his deplorable speech is becoming more and more apparent. In the columns of The Daily Herald, cheek by jowl with advertisements concerning “Herbalists,” “Safe and Sure Treatment for Anaemia, Irregularities, etc.,” “Knowledge for Young Wives,” and “Surgical Goods and Appliances,” there appears the following notice:

 

“Lord Dawson, the King’s Physician, says, ‘Birth control has come to

stay.’ Following up this honest and daring declaration, the Liberator

League have decided to distribute 10,000 copies of its publications

free to applicants sending stamped addressed envelopes to J.W. Gott,

Secretary … London, N.W.5.”

A stamped addressed envelope brought in return sample copies of two undated newsprints, entitled The Rib Tickler and The Liberator, and, to the honour of newsvendors, we learn that these papers are “not supplied by newsagents.” The first print is devoted to Blasphemy, and the second to Birth Control. Both papers are edited by J.W. Gott, “of London, Leeds, Liverpool, and other prisons,” who, when he is not in jail for selling blasphemous or obscene literature, earns a livelihood by a propaganda of “Secularism, Socialism, and Neo-Malthusianism,” combined with the sale of contraceptives. At Birmingham in 1921 this individual, according to his own statement, was charged, on eleven summonses, with having sent “an obscene book” and “obscene literature” through the post, and with “publishing a blasphemous libel of and concerning the Holy Scriptures and the Christian Religion.” “The Malthusian League (at their own expense, for which I here wish to thank them) sent their Hon. Secretary, Dr. Binnie Dunlop, who gave evidence” … that the Council of the Malthusian League … “most strongly protests against the description of G. Hardy’s book, How to prevent Pregnancy, as obscene, for that book gives in a perfectly refined and scientific way this urgently needed information.” This opinion was not shared by the jury, who brought in a verdict of guilty, and Gott was sentenced to six months’ imprisonment. From the Liberator we learn that the Treasurer of the Liberator League was fined �20, having been found guilty on the following summons—“for that you on the eleventh day of September 1920, at the Parish of Consett, in the County aforesaid, unlawfully, wickedly, maliciously, and scandalously did sell to divers persons, whose names are unknown, in a public street, there situate, a certain lewd, wicked, scandalous, and obscene print entitled ‘Large or Small Families,’ against the Peace of our Sovereign Lord the King, His Crown and Dignity.”

Lord Dawson’s advice was indeed perilous because “the British Empire and all its traditions will decline and fall if the Motherland is faithless to motherhood”; [120] and the nation would do better to pay heed to the following words of His Majesty the King: “The foundations of national glory are in the homes of the people. They will only remain unshaken while the family life of our race and nation is strong, simple, and pure.”

All Lord Dawson’s arguments are hoary fallacies. “Once more, careful distinction needs to be made between”—anaesthetics and contraceptives. Anaesthetics assist the birth of a child, whereas contraceptives frustrate the act of procreation. The old explanation that man’s progress has been achieved by harnessing and not by opposing the forces of nature is dismissed with ignominy. The age-long teaching of Hippocrates that the healing art was based on the Vis Medicatrix Naturae is overthrown by Lord Dawson of Penn, in a single sentence; and in place of the Father of Medicine as a guide to health of body and mind, there comes the King’s Physician:

 

“To pestle a poison’d poison behind his crimson lights.”

When a great leader announces the birth of a new epoch, it is meet that the rank and file remain silent; and at this Congress of the Church of England no jarring interruptions marred the solemnity of the moment. No old-fashioned doctor was there to utter a futile protest, and there was no simple-minded clergyman to rise in the name of Christ and give Lord Dawson the lie. Without dissent, on a public platform of the Established Church, presided over by a Bishop, and in full view of the nation, “the moth-eaten mantle of Malthus, the godless robe of Bradlaugh, and the discarded garments of Mrs. Besant,” [121] were donned—by the successor of Lister. It was a proud moment for the birth controllers, but for that national institution called “Ecclesia Anglicana” a moment full of shame.

[Footnote 100: British Medical Journal, August 6, 1921, p. 219.]

[Footnote 101: There is, or perhaps we should say there was, a legacy of 1,000 Rhenish guilders awaiting anyone who, in the judgment of the faculty of law in the University of Heidelberg or of Bonn, is able to establish the fact that any Jesuit ever taught this doctrine or anything equivalent to it. Vide The Antidote, vol. iii, p. 125, C.T.S., London.]

[Footnote 102: Gen. xxxviii. 9-10]

[Footnote 103: Vide Catholic Times, August 27, 1921, p. 7.]

[Footnote 104: The Army and Religion, 1919, p. 448.]

[Footnote 105: Universe, November 4, 1921, p. 3.]

[Footnote 106: Eighty-second Annual Report of the