Part 2

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. 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.

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! Do all contraceptive measures damage the individual? The answer to that depends on the purpose for which they are used. If they are used to render unions childless or inadequately fruitful they are harmful. There are grounds for thinking that unrealisation of maternity favours sterility.

Generally speaking, birth control before the first child is inadvisable. On the other hand, the justifiable use of birth control is to limit the number of children, and to spread out their arrival in such a way as to serve their true interests and those of their home.

That such applications of birth control produce no harm receives support from the study of the numbers and distribution of the children of the professional classes.

The advantage and disadvantage of this or that contraceptive is a technical matter for the doctors to determine.

Again, it has been stated that artificial control is harmful because it leads to excessive indulgence. Experience and evidence are against this being a fact.

Contraceptives by the time and circumstance of their application involve prudence and control. The proper and efficient restraints on undue sexual indulgence are to be found in mutual consideration, sympathy, and tenderness and the pressing claims of life's duties.

The sensualist who is not deterred from excess by these considerations will be completely careless whether his indulgence results in children or not--he is moved by his selfish impulses alone.

CAREFUL DISTINCTION.

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 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, over-work do not carry condemnation of eating, drinking, smoking, sleeping, work.

But the evils of excessive birth control are very real. There is first the individual--every woman is better in body and mind for child bearing--the periodic completion of the maternal cycle brings out the best, preserves youth and maintains vital contact with life. Maternity gives to woman her most beautiful attributes. Fancy being mad enough to suppress it! If one watches the woman with one child and all maternity finished before thirty, and compare her at forty with the woman of the same age who has had, say, four children at proper intervals, who usually has the advantage in preservation of youth and beauty? Not the former.

On the other hand, it must be admitted that baby after baby every year or eighteen months wears and often exhausts a woman's strength. The inference is that the use of birth control is good, its abuse bad.

Next, the children. Is it even necessary to refer to the failure of the single-child household? Poor little thing! Surrounded by over-anxious parents, spoilt, no children to play with, bored stiff by adults. And then, perhaps, illness, and it may be death--and when it is too late to produce another.

Of the many tragedies I met in the war none exceeded that attaching to the loss of only children. It often means the end of all things; nothing to live for--just blank despair.

THE WAY OF HAPPINESS.

The parents and the home both need children of varying ages. That is the way of happiness and enduring youth.

And lastly, the national aspect may be stated very briefly. If England is not to lose her place in the world her population must be maintained. Unless fathers and mothers produce an average of over three children that population will not be maintained.

If you say to a young husband and wife with their one or two children, "Do you like to contemplate that when you both leave life your country will, through your action, be worse off than when you entered life?" that is an appeal to patriotism, and likely to be a successful appeal.

There are signs of a public opinion forming which will condemn the selfishness of marriages without their proper heritage of children, but such public opinion will not be strengthened by an indiscriminate condemnation of birth control.

May I end my speech with an appeal that the Church approaches this question, in common with certain others, in the light of modern knowledge and the needs of a new world, and unhampered by traditions which have outworn their usefulness?

PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN BY THE WHITEFRIARS PRESS, LTD., LONDON AND TONBRIDGE.

End of Project Gutenberg's Love--Marriage--Birth Control, by Bertrand Dawson