The student of the progress of human affairs, or even the average person whose knowledge of the doings of mankind is derived from a hasty and casual reading of the daily newspapers and the popular magazines, cannot plead ignorance of the growing interest in the general subject which is embraced within the content of the term “Birth Control.”
But while the general meaning of the term is at least vaguely grasped by the average member of the human crowd—the individual to whom we refer as “the man on the street”—we find a startling condition of mental confusion and often positive misconception concerning the essence and spirit of the general idea expressed by the term in question.
While the fact is a reflection upon the average intelligence of the general public, it must be admitted that to the average person, or “the man on the street,” Birth Control means simply the teaching and practice of certain methods whereby men and women may indulge their sexual appetites, in or out of marriage, without incurring the liability or risk of conception and child-bearing. The average person does not stop to consider that such teachings and practices do not constitute “Birth Control” at all, but are, rather, merely the theory and practice of Birth Prevention, desirable only to those who seek sexual indulgences without being called upon to shoulder the responsibilities attached by Nature to the physical sexual union of men and women.
The term “control” does not mean “prohibition,” or “prevention”; but, on the contrary, means “governing, regulating, or managing influence.” Birth Control, in the true meaning of the term, does not mean the prevention or prohibition of the birth of children, but rather the encouragement of the birth of children under the best possible conditions and the discouragement of the birth of children under improper or unfavorable conditions.
Birth Control, in the true meaning of the term, does not mean theories and practices which would tend to reduce the population of the civilized countries of the world, but rather theories and practice which would inevitably result in the production of an adequate ratio of increase in the population of such countries, not only by reason of a normal birth-rate, but also by reason of a diminishing death-rate among infants—by the production of healthier children, accompanied by the raising of the standard of the average child born in such countries.
Birth Control, in the true meaning of the term, therefore, is seen to consist not of the prohibition or prevention of human offspring, but rather of the governing, regulating, and managing of the production of human offspring, under the inspiration of the highest ideals and under the direction of the highest reason, for the purpose of the advancement and welfare of the race and that of the individuals composing the race. Instead of being an anti-social and anti-moral propaganda, Birth Control when rightly understood is perceived to be in accordance with the highest social aims and aspirations, and in accordance with the highest and purest morality of the race.
Much of the opposition toward the general movement of Birth Control which has been manifested by many well-meaning, though misinformed, persons, has arisen by reason of the erroneous conception and understanding of the term itself, and of misleading information concerning the true nature of the best teachings on the subject. This prejudice has been heightened by certain zealous but ill-balanced advocates of the general movement who have overemphasized the incidental feature of the limitation of offspring under certain conditions, and who have appealed to the attention and interest merely of those who wished to escape the responsibilities of parenthood. This has caused much sorrow and distress to the many persons who have the highest ideals and results in view, and who deplore this unbalanced propaganda under the name, and apparently under the cloak of the general movement. Such persons have felt inclined to cry aloud “Good Lord, deliver us from our so-called friends!”
One of the most distressing features of the popular prejudice against Birth Control, arising from a total misconception of the subject, has been the widely spread and popularly accepted notion that Birth Control is practically analogous to abortion—or, at the best, but a more refined and less repulsive and less dangerous form of abortion. In view of the fact that one of the important results sought to be obtained by a scientific knowledge of Birth Control actually is the prevention and avoidance of the crime of abortion which has wrought such terrible havoc among the women of civilized countries, it is most distressing and discouraging to the conscientious and high-minded advocates of Birth Control to have it said and believed that their teachings encourage and justify abortion.
A reference to any standard dictionary or textbook will reveal the fact that “Abortion” means: “the premature expulsion of the human embryo or foetus; miscarriage voluntarily induced or produced,” etc. It is seen at a glance that the essence and meaning of abortion consists in the destruction of the human embryo which has resulted from conception. The embryo human child must already exist in its elemental form, before it can be destroyed by abortion. Therefore, if no such embryo form exists, it cannot be destroyed, and therefore there can be no abortion in such a case. And, it may positively be stated, no true advocate of Birth Control can possibly justify, much less advocate, the destruction of the human embryo or foetus, which act constitutes abortion. The difference between true Birth Control teachings and methods, and that of the advocates of abortion, is as great as the difference between the two poles. Instead of the two being identical or similar, they are diametrically opposed one to the other—they are logical “opposites,” each the antithesis of the other.
Even in those forms or phases of the Birth Control propaganda in which the use of “contraceptives,” or “preventatives” is considered justified in certain cases—and these forms and phases are far from being the most important, as all students of the subject know—even in these exceptional forms and phases of the general subject the idea of abortion is combatted, and never justified or encouraged. A “contraceptive” agency merely tends to prevent or obviate undesirable conception; it never acts to destroy the result of previous and accomplished conception. A “contraceptive” merely prevents the union of the male and female elements of reproduction, and consequently the process from which evolves the foetus or embryo. A leading medical authority has said regarding this distinction: “In inducing abortion, one destroys something already formed—a foetus or an embryo, a fertilized ovum, a potential human being. In prevention, however, one merely prevents chemically or mechanically the spermatozoa from coming in contact with the ovum. There is no greater sin or crime in this than there is in simple abstinence, in refraining from sexual intercourse.”
What then must we say when we consider the higher and more advanced forms and phases of Birth Control, those phases and forms which may be said to be mental or emotional “contraceptives,” rather than physical? Surely these cannot be considered as identical with or similar to abortion. And when we consider those phases and forms of Birth Control which are concerned with Pre-Natal Culture—the culture of the child before its birth—can one, even though he be intensely prejudiced against Birth Control, assert that there is to be found here anything which in any way whatsoever can be considered as relating to the theory or practice of abortion? And what must we say of the still higher phases in which the teachings are concerned with the mental and physical preparation of the parents prior to the conception of the child, to the end that the child may have the best possible physiological and psychological basis for its future well-being? Is not this the very antithesis and opposite of all that concerns abortion or abortive methods?
The trouble about all great movements designed for the benefit of the human race is that at the beginning there is attracted to the movement, by reason of its novelty and “newness,” certain elements which seize upon certain incidental features of the general idea, make them their own while excluding or ignoring the more important things, and then exploit these incidental features in a sensational way, thereby attracting public attention and gaining much undesirable notoriety, and as a consequence bringing discredit and disfavor, prejudice and misunderstanding, to the general movement.
Birth Control has passed through this apparently inevitable experience, and has suffered greatly thereby. But the Light is being thrown on the Dark Places, and the more intelligent portion of the public is beginning to realize that there is another side to the shield of Birth Control. And, as a consequence, much of the original prejudice is disappearing, and a new understanding of the subject is arising in the minds of many of the best individuals of the race. It is the purpose of this book to help to dispel the ignorance and misconception concerning this great subject of Birth Control, and to aid in presenting the higher and nobler aspects of the general movement to the attention of those who are concerned with the advance and progress of the race as a whole, and of the individual members thereof.
The student of the subject of Birth Control will fall into grievous error if he begins his consideration of the subject under the impression that the questions concerned therein are new to the world of living things. If the process of Birth Control were something which had suddenly sprung into existence in the consciousness of man, without having an antecedent activity in the history of the race, and of living creatures in general, we might well hesitate to go further in the matter without the most serious and prolonged consideration of the entire principle by the careful thought of the wisest of the race. But while such consideration is advisable, as in the case of any and all important problems presenting themselves for solution and judgment, it is found that those so considering the subject have a sound and firm foundation upon which to base their thought and to test their conclusions.
As many thoughtful students of the subject have pointed out to us, the question of Birth Control has been with the race practically since the beginning of human history; and it has its correspondences in the instinctive actions of the lower forms of life. The chief difference is that we are now seeking to deal with these problems consciously, voluntarily, and deliberately, whereas in the past the race has dealt with them more or less unconsciously, by methods of trial and error, through perpetual experiment which has often proved costly but which has all the more clearly brought out the real course of natural processes.
We cannot hope to solve problems so ancient and so deeply rooted as these by merely the rational methods of yesterday and today. To be of value our rational methods must be the revelation in deliberate consciousness of unconscious methods which go far back into the remote past. Our deliberate methods will not be sound except in so far as they are a continuation of those methods which, in the slow evolution of life, have been found sound and progressive on the plane of instinct. This is particularly true in the case of those among us who desire their own line of conduct in the matter to be so closely in accord with natural law, or the law of creation, that to question it would be impious.
It may be accepted without an extended argument or presentation of evidence that at the outset the prime object of Nature seems to have been that of Reproduction. There is evident, without doubt, an effort on the part of Nature to secure economy of method in the attainment of ever greater perfection in the process of reproduction, but we cannot deny that the primary motive seems to be that of reproduction pure and simple. The tendency toward reproduction is indeed so fundamental in Nature that it is impressed with the greatest emphasis upon every living thing. And, as careful thinkers have told us “the course of evolution seems to have been more of an effort to slow down reproduction than to furnish it with new facilities.”
Reproduction appears in the history of life even before sex manifests itself. The lower forms of animal and plant life oftener produce themselves without the aid of sex, and some authorities have argued that the presence of sex differentiation serves rather to check active propagation rather than to increase it. If quantity, without regard to quality or variation, be the object of Nature, then that purpose would have been better served by withholding sex-differentiation than by evolving it. As Professor Coulter, a leading American botanist, has well said: “The impression one gains of sexuality is that it represents reproduction under peculiar difficulties.”
To those who find it difficult to assimilate this somewhat startling idea, we now present a brief statement of the infinitely greater facility toward reproduction manifested by living creatures lacking in sex-differentiation as compared with those possessing it. It is seen that bacteria among primitive plants, and protozoa among primitive animals, are patterns of very rapid and prolific reproduction, though sex begins to appear in a rudimentary form in very lowly forms of life. A single infusorian becomes in a week the ancestor of millions, that is to say, of far more individuals than could proceed under the most favorable conditions from a pair of elephants in five centuries; and Huxley has calculated that the progeny of a single parthenogenetic aphis, under favorable circumstances, would in a few months outweigh the whole population of China. It must be noted, however, that this proviso “under favorable circumstances” reveals the weak point of Nature’s early method of reproduction by enormously rapid multiplication. Creatures so easily produced are easily destroyed; and Nature, apparently in consequence, wastes no time in imparting to them the qualities needed for a high form of life and living.
And, even after sex differentiation had attained a considerable degree of development, Nature seemed slow to abandon her original plan of rapid multiplication of individuals. Among insects so far advanced as the white ants, the queen lays eggs at the enormous rate of 80,000 a day during her period of active life. Higher in the scale, we find the female herring laying 70,000 eggs at one period of delivery. But in both of these cases we find the manifestation of that apparently invariable rule of Nature, viz., that a high birth-rate is accompanied by a heavy death-rate, whether that high death-rate be caused by natural enemies, wars, or disease.
At a certain stage of the evolutionary process, Nature seems to have awakened to a realization of the fact that it was better, from every point of view, to produce a fewsuperior beings rather than a vast number of inferior ones. Here, at last, Nature discloses a heretofore hidden aim, namely, the production of quality rather than quantity; and once she has started on this new path, she has pursued it with even greater eagerness than that of reproduction pure and simple. And here we pause to note a principle laid down by the students of Evolution, viz., that advancing evolution is accompanied by declining fertility.
This new stage of Nature’s processes is marked by a constant and invariable manifestation of diminished number of offspring, accompanied by an increased amount of time and care in the creation and breeding of each of the young creatures. Accompanying this, we find that the reproductive life of the creature is shortened, and confined to more or less special periods; these periods beginning much later, and ending much earlier, and even during their continuance tending to operate in cycles of activity. Here, we see, Nature, grown wiser by experience, herself began to exercise her power in the direction of Birth Control—the use of preventive checks on reproduction.
A writer has said along these lines: “As reproduction slackened, evolution was greatly accelerated. A highly important and essential aspect of this greater individuation is a higher survival value. The more complex and better equipped creature can meet and subdue difficulties and dangers to which the more lowly organized creature that came before—produced wholesale in a way which Nature seems to look back on as cheap and nasty—succumbed helplessly without an effort. The idea of economy began to assert itself in the world. It became clear in the course of evolution that it is better to produce really good and highly efficient organisms, at whatever cost, than to be content with cheap production on a wholesale scale. They allowed greater developmental progress to be made, and they lasted better. Even before man began it was proved in the animal world that the death-rate falls as the birth-rate falls.”
Let us compare the lowly herring with the highly evolved elephant. The herring multiplies with enormous rapidity and on a vast scale, and it possesses a very small brain, and is almost totally unequipped to grapple with the special difficulties of its life, to which it succumbs on a wholesale scale. A single elephant is carried for about two years in its mother’s womb, and is carefully guarded by her for many years after birth; it possesses a large brain, and its muscular system is as remarkable for its delicacy as for its power, and is guided by the most sensitive perceptions. It is fully equipped for all the dangers of life, save for those which have been introduced by the subtle ingenuity of modern man. Though a single pair of elephants produces so few offspring, yet their high cost is justified, for each of them has a reasonable chance of surviving to old age. This contrast, from the point of view of reproduction, of the herring and the elephant, well illustrates the principle of evolution previously referred to. It brings clearly into view the difference between Nature’s earlier and her later methods—the ever increasing preference for quality over quantity. Unless we grasp this underlying principle of Nature in its wider aspects we may fail to perceive its operations in the case of man, which latter we may now consider.
It is, of course, impossible to speak positively regarding the birth-rate and death-rate of the pre-historic primitive races of mankind, for there is not data upon which to base such a report. But reasoning upon the basis of conditions existing among the primitive tribes of the present time we are justified in holding that in the early stages of the evolution of the race there was manifested a high birth-rate and a correspondingly high death-rate. Upon the basis of conditions now existing among savage tribes it would appear that primitive man has a higher birth-rate than the average of mankind today, and likewise a higher death-rate. The rapidly increasing number of children born to the tribe was counteracted by deaths among children caused by neglect, poverty, and disease. In some cases the population was prevented from becoming larger than the means of subsistence justified by the practice of infanticide.
As to the condition of the race in the early stages of “modern” civilization, we have modern Russia as a surviving instance of this stage. In modern Russia we find, side by side with the progress in neighboring nations, conditions which a few centuries ago existed all over Europe. Here we have an enormous birth-rate, and a terrible death-rate caused by ignorance, superstition, insanitation, filth, bad food, impure water, plagues, famines, and other accompaniments of overcrowding and misery. We find a mortality among young children which sometimes destroys more than half of the children born before they have attained the age of five years. As high as is the Russian birth-rate, it is a matter of record that at times the death-rate has actually exceeded it. And among the survivors there is found a startlingly large percentage of chronic and incurable diseases, with a large number of cases of blindness and other defects.
Similar results follow in China, where the birth-rate is exceptionally high, and the death-rate correspondingly large; and where there is a large percentage of inferior physical development and pathological defects, the evil conditions which produce death also tending to produce deterioration in the survivors. In both of these countries we have an example of the result of unrestricted reproduction, and unrestricted destruction—as among herrings, so among men. And yet this condition of unrestricted reproduction is the logical goal of certain persons who, inspired by the best possible intentions, in their ignorance and criminal rashness would dare to arrest that fall in the birth-rate which is now beginning to spread its influence in every civilized land.
In Western Europe before the nineteenth century the population increased very slowly. The enormous birth-rate was nearly equalled by the exceedingly heavy death-rate caused by plagues, pestilences, and famine, and by the frequent wars large and small. The mortality among young children was particularly heavy. Writers have pointed out that the old family records show frequently two or three children of the same Christian name, the first child having died and its name given to a successor.
During the last quarter of the eighteenth century, when machinery was introduced and a new industrial era opened, the birth-rate rose rapidly. Factories springing up gave increased support to many, and as children were employed as “hands” in the mills at an early age, the richest family was the one with most children. The population began to increase rapidly. But soon disease, misery, and poverty arose from filth and insanitation, immorality and crime, overcrowding and child-labor, drink and lack of sane courses of conduct.
In time, however, progress set in, and social reformers began the great movement for the betterment of the environment, sanitation, shorter hours of labor, and restriction of child-labor, factory regulation, etc. And when the environment is bettered, the death-rate drops, and the birth-rate accompanies it on its downward progress. As Leroy-Beaulieu says: “The first degree of prosperity in a rude population with few needs tends toward prolificness of reproduction; a later degree of prosperity, accompanied by all the feelings and ideas stimulated by the reduction of such prolificness.”
The law of the reduction of reproduction in response to the improvement of environment is a natural law, arising from fixed biological principles. This is because when we improve the environment we improve the individual situated in that environment; and the improvement of the individual has always resulted in a check upon reproduction. We must remember, however, that this change is not the result of conscious or voluntary action; instead it is the result of unconscious activities and instinctive urge. As Sir Shirley Murphy has said: “Birth Control is a natural process, and though in civilized men, endowed with high intelligence, it necessarily works in some measure voluntarily and deliberately, it is probable that it also works, as in the evolution of the lower animals, to some extent automatically.”
Science shows us that even among the most primitive micro-organisms; when placed under unfavorable conditions as to food and environment, they tend to pass into a reproductive phase and by sporulation or otherwise begin to produce new individuals rapidly. This, of course, because of the fact that their death-rate is increased, and an increased birth-rate must be manifested in order to maintain a balance. If the environment be improved, the death-rate decreases, and this is followed by a fall in the birth-rate, according to the constant laws of Nature manifesting in such cases.
The same law is seen to be manifested in the case of Man. Improve his environment, and his death-rate drops, which is accompanied by a falling birth-rate. Here, once more we see the application of the scientific axiom “Improve the environment and reproduction is checked.” As Leroy-Beaulieu has said: “The tendency of civilization is to reduce the birth-rate.” And as Professor Benjamin Moore has said: “Decreased reproduction is the simple biological reply to good economic conditions.” And as Havelock Ellis has said: “Those who desire a higher birth-rate are desiring, whether they know it or not, the increase of poverty, ignorance, and wretchedness.”
Among men, Birth Control has now evolved from the unconscious and instinctive phase, and is now unfolding and manifesting on the plane of conscious and voluntary activity. The influence of deliberate intention and conscious design is now one of the important factors in the process. Here at this point we reach a totally new aspect of reproduction. In the past stages of evolution the original impetus toward reproduction has been checked and directed by Nature, working along instinctive and unconscious lines; and the result has been an extreme diminution of the number of off-spring; a prolongation of the time devoted to the breeding and care of each new member of the family, in harmony with its greatly prolonged life; a spacing out of the intervals between the offspring; and, as a result, a vastly greater development of each individual, and an ever better equipment for the task of living. All this was slowly attained automatically, without any conscious volition on the part of the individuals, even when they were human beings, who were the agents.
Now, however, we are confronted with a change which we may regard as, in some respects, the most momentous sudden advance in the whole history of reproduction, namely, the process of reproductive progress now become conscious and deliberately volitional. Birth control, no longer automatic, is now being directed by human mind and will precisely to the attainment of ends which Nature has been struggling after for millions of years; and, being consciously and deliberately directed, it is now enabled to avoid many of the pitfalls into which the unconscious method fell.
Havelock Ellis says: “The control and limitation of reproductive activity by conscious and volitional effort is an attempt by open-eyed intelligence and foresight to attain those ends which Nature through untold generations has been painfully yet tirelessly struggling for. The deliberate co-operation of Man in the natural task of Birth Control represents an identification of the human will with what we may, if we choose, regard as the divinely appointed law of the world. We can well believe that the great pioneers, who, a century ago, acted in the spirit of this faith may have echoed the thought of Kepler when, on discovering his great planetary law, he exclaimed in rapture: ‘O God! I think Thy thoughts after Thee!’”
The following brief general history of the modern Birth Control movement is quoted from Havelock Ellis, and will be of interest to students of the subject: “The pioneers of modern Birth Control were English. Among them Malthus occupies the first place. That distinguished man, in his great and influential work, ‘The Principles of Population,’ in 1798, emphasized the immense importance of foresight and self-control in procreation, and the profound significance of birth limitation for human welfare. Malthus, however, relied on ascetic self-restraint, a method which could only appeal to the few; he had nothing to say for the regulation of conception in intercourse. That was suggested twenty years later, very cautiously by James Mill, the father of John Stuart Mill, in the ‘Encyclopaedia Britannica.’ Four years afterwards, Mill’s friend, the Radical reformer, Francis Place, advocated this method more clearly. Finally, in 1831, Robert Dale Owen, the son of the great Robert Owen, published his ‘Moral Physiology,’ in which he set forth the ways of preventing conception; while a little later the Drysdale brothers, ardent and unwearying philanthropists, devoted their energies to a propaganda which has been spreading ever since and has now conquered the whole civilized world.
“It was not, however, in England but in France, so often at the head of an advance in civilization, that Birth Control first firmly became established, and that the extravagantly high birth rate of earlier times began to fall; this happened in the first half of the nineteenth century, whether or not it was mainly due to voluntary control. In England the movement came later, and the steady decline in the English birth-rate, which is still proceeding, began in 1877. In the previous year there had been a famous prosecution of Bradlaugh and Mrs. Besant for disseminating pamphlets describing the methods of preventing conception; the charge was described by the Lord Chief Justice, who tried the case, as one of the most ill-advised and injudicious ever made in a court of justice. But it served an undesigned end by giving enormous publicity to the subject and advertising the methods it sought to suppress. There can be no doubt, however, that even apart from this trial the movement would have proceeded on the same lines. The times were ripe, the great industrial expansion had passed its first feverish phase, social conditions were improving, education was spreading. The inevitable character of the movement is indicated by the fact that at the very same time it began to be manifested all over Europe, indeed in every civilized country of the world.
“At the present time the birth-rate (as well as usually the death-rate) is falling in every country of the world sufficiently civilized to possess statistics of its own vital movement. The fall varies in rapidity. It has been considerable in the more progressive countries; it has lingered in the more backward countries. If we examine the latest statistics for Europe, we find that every country, without exception, with a progressive and educated population, and a fairly high state of social well-being, presents a birth-rate below 30 per 1,000. We also find that every country in Europe in which the mass of the people are primitive, ignorant, or in a socially unsatisfactory condition (even although the governing classes may be progressive or ambitious) shows a birth-rate of above 30 per 1,000. France, Great Britain, Belgium, Holland, the Scandinavian countries, and Switzerland are in the first group. Russia, Austro-Hungary, Italy, Spain, and the Balkan countries are in the second group. The German Empire was formerly in the second group, but now comes within the first group, and has carried on the movement so energetically that the birth-rate of Berlin is already below that of London, and that at the present rate of decline the birth-rate of the German Empire will before long sink to that of France. Outside Europe, in the United States just as much as in Australia and New Zealand, the same progressive movement is proceeding with equal activity.”
The same authority sums up the present attitude of the advocates of scientific and rational Birth Control, as follows: “The wide survey of the question of birth limitation has settled the question of the desirability of the adoption of preventing conception, and finally settled those who would waste out time with their fears that it is not right to control conception. We know now on whose side are the laws of God and Nature. We realize that in exercising control over the entrance gate of life we are not fully performing, consciously and deliberately, a great human duty, but carrying on rationally a beneficial process which has, more blindly and wastefully, been carried on since the beginning of the world. There are still a few persons ignorant enough or foolish enough to fight against the advance of civilization in this matter; we can well afford to leave them severely alone, knowing that in a few years all of them will have passed away. It is not our business to defend the control of birth, but simply discuss how we may most wisely exercise that control.”
PRIVATE Sex Advice to Women By R. B. Armitage, M. D.
For Young Wives and those who Expect to be Married.
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