[CHAPTER XXIV]
The Ethics of Birth Control
A corollary of the doctrine which treats of the destruction in medical practice of existent human life, is a consideration of what is called Birth Control, or the criminal prevention of possible human life by onanistic contraceptive methods. There has been an agitation for several years past in western and northwestern Europe and in the United States to bring about the repeal of laws which forbid the spreading of information on the methods of preventing conception. The laws which the agitators wish to have abrogated declare that contraceptive information is indecent and should be classed with the circulation of obscene literature, pornographic pictures, and instruction in abortion. The birth control advocates pay no attention to accusations like those expressed in the laws, or to those made by persons who have accurate notions of morality and common decency, but assert that the spread of contraceptive information tends to benefit the individual and human society.
Birth control as advocated by its perpetrators is intrinsically contrary to the natural law, and therefore immoral; it mentally and physically debases those that are guilty of the practice; it does not benefit the poor as its advocates claim it does; the arguments urged by its supporters are foolish and frequently deliberate untruths; and it is destructive of society and the state. Broadly speaking the natural law rests on the principle that order, reason, justice, what is congruous with the nature of a being or faculty and tends to its perfection in being or action, should prevail, and that disorder, unreason, injustice, the unnatural, must be avoided. The right order of nature as established by the Supreme Creator of nature is the standard of action; what is contrary to that order is evil, wrong, destructive, criminal, injurious, or the like, in different circumstances, but altogether these deordinate conditions must be removed, not accepted. Morality also depends on these facts. Morality is merely the observance of the natural law, and immorality is revolt against that law.
Since the natural law evidently prescribes that man must live in society and that the human race which constitutes this society, is to be preserved by the generation of new human beings who will replace those that die, or are made useless by disease or other accident, whatever tends to this sustention of humanity according to the natural law, and in the proper conditions, is good, and whatever tends to the destruction of humanity is evil and to be avoided.
The generation of new replacing human beings must take place only in the state of marriage, because thus solely the wife and the child are protected, the children are educated physically, mentally and morally, and the degradation and bestiality of promiscuous sexual relationship are averted. The first and principal end of marriage is the procreation of children. That end of marriage must be the end on which is founded primarily the natural necessity for this contract, but the natural necessity for the contract is the propagation of the human kind through lawful generation and education. Marriage, too, in its very nature is fitted for that chief end, and for that end it was instituted by the Author of nature—a stable, perpetual association of the sexes for the attainment of what is requisite for the propagation of mankind. There are secondary ends of marriage, such as a reciprocal love and help of the husband and wife, and also that aspect of marriage which makes it a restraint upon promiscuous lust. These last, however, are not enough to justify marriage in themselves without the first or chief end, which is the procreation of children.
Whatever is subversive of the end of marriage, and that is the propagation of mankind, is subversive of the very foundation of human society, is contrary to the nature of man, frustrates the primal function of nature, and is therefore essentially and always evil, as bestiality, sodomy, or incest are evil. Such is birth control as ordinarily practised. Birth control if it is effective through a reciprocal consent of a wedded couple, for grave reason, and solely by mutual abstention from the debitum may be in certain conditions an indifferent act morally. If, however, birth control is effected by contraceptive drugs, or like methods, it is a crime against nature, and always a crime which no circumstance can excuse, no more than no circumstance can excuse bestiality, sodomy, or incest. Secondly, marriage, which was instituted primarily to perpetuate the creative act of God, when such practices prevail degenerates to mere concubinage, a gratification of lust protected from the police. Such practices, moreover, lower man and woman below the brutes, because brutes do not frustrate the natural law except in the case of the male rat and a few other low grade rodents and boar pigs. Onan is the patron of Birth Control advocates. The Book of Genesis said Onan, the son of Judah, "did a detestable thing, therefore the Lord slew him."
These are the fundamental reasons those of us recognize who do not wish that the ignorant and vicious should be taught to act contrary to the natural law. Furthermore, there is always another way out of the difficulties, mostly imaginary, the birth control advocates conjure up. Granting that all the difficulties from multiple births are real, no end justifies essentially evil means, and a subversion of the natural law is always essentially evil. War, homicide, and like acts are not always evil; under certain circumstances both war and homicide may be holy deeds; but to act contrary to nature is never justifiable in any condition. If I owe a man a large sum of money it may be to the advantage of myself or my children that this man be removed, but that good end does not justify murder; no more does any condition of poverty justify a contraceptive act against nature, especially when such an act is never the sole means of evasion. We must protect the married state, but in America we are destroying it. Human society had its origin in marriage, and it depends on marriage for its preservation, but our American divorce laws have made marriage a travesty. In New York alone in 1916 there were 74,893 women divorced, nearly twenty-eight times as many as were divorced in England and Wales in that year, and over forty-nine per cent. of these women were childless, very significantly. Probably ninety-five per cent. of the childless women had used contraceptive methods, yet there are few forces better able to hold the marriage knot tied as it should be tied than a child's fingers. In England and Wales, too, in 1916, forty per cent. of the divorced couples were also birth controllers, at least they had no children. Pennsylvania is much more shameless than New York in granting divorces for no reason at all.