As birth control means the deliberate frustration of a natural act which might have issued in a new life, it is an unnatural crime, and is stigmatised by theologians as a sin akin to murder. To this charge birth controllers further reply that millions of the elements of procreation are destroyed by Nature herself, and that "to add one more to these millions sacrificed by Nature is surely no crime." This attempt at argument is pathetic. If these people knew even the A.B.C. of biology, they would know that millions of those elements are allowed to perish by Nature for a definite purpose—namely, to make procreation more certain. It is in order that the one may achieve the desired end that it is reinforced by millions of others. Moreover, although millions of deaths in the world occur every year from natural causes, it would nevertheless, I fear, be a crime if I were to cause one more death by murdering a birth controller.
Section 2. REFLECTED IN THE NORMAL CONSCIENCE
In common with irrational animals we have instincts, appetites, and passions; but, unlike the animals, we have the power to reflect whether an action is right or wrong in itself apart from its consequences. This power of moral judgment is called conscience; and it is conscience which reflects the natural law (the Divine Nature expressed in creation). As conscience, when violated, can and does give rise to an unpleasant feeling of shame in the mind, we have good reason to believe that it exists for the purpose of preventing us from doing shameful actions, just as our eyes are intended, amongst other things, to prevent us from walking over precipices. Moreover, if the conscience is active, instructed, and unbiassed, it will invariably give the correct answer to any question of right or wrong.
It is possible to assert, without fear of contradiction, that no ordinary decent man or woman approaches or begins the practice of artificial birth control without experiencing at first unpleasant feelings of uneasiness, hesitation, repugnance, shame, and remorse. Later on these feelings may be overcome by habit, for the voice of conscience will cease when it has been frequently ignored. This does not alter the fact that at first the natural moral instincts of both men and women do revolt against these practices. To the conscience of mankind birth control is a shameful action.
Section 3. EXPRESSED IN THE SCIENCE OF ETHICS
The dictates of conscience go to form the science of ethics. According to ethics, the practice of birth control means the doing of an act whilst at the same time frustrating the object for which the act is intended. It is like using language to conceal the truth, or using appetite so as to injure rather than to promote health. During the decline of the Roman Empire men gorged themselves with food, took an emetic, vomited, and then sat down to eat again. They satiated their appetite and frustrated the object for which appetite is intended. The practice of birth control is parallel to this piggishness. No one can deny that the sexual impulse has for aim the procreation of children. The birth controllers seek to gratify the impulse, yet to defeat the aim; and they are so honest in their mistaken convictions that, when faced with this argument, they boldly adopt an attitude which spells intellectual and moral anarchy. They say that it is simply a waste of time to discuss the moral aspect of this practice. Without being able to dispute the truth that birth control is against nature, conscience, and ethics, they attempt to prove that at any rate the results of this practice are beneficial, or in other words that a good end justifies the use of evil means. This is a doctrine that has been universally repudiated by mankind. [101] Nevertheless, if birth control, in spite of its being an offence against moral and natural law, was really beneficial to humanity, then birth controllers would be able to claim pragmatic justification for the practices, and to argue that what actually and universally tends to the good of mankind cannot be bad in itself. Birth control, as I have already shown, does not conform to these conditions; therefore that argument also fails.
Section 4. BIRTH CONTROL CONDEMNED BY PROTESTANT CHURCHES
The Protestants, at the time of the Reformation, retained and even exaggerated certain beliefs of the undivided Catholic Church. None of them doubted, for instance, that the Bible was the Word of God and therefore a guide to moral conduct. They knew that artificial birth control is forbidden by the Bible, and that in the Old Testament the punishment for that sin was death. [102] In 1876, when Charles Bradlaugh advocated in a notorious pamphlet the practice of birth control, his views were denounced from every Protestant pulpit in the land, and were widely repudiated by the upper and middle classes of England. But it would seem that Protestant morality is now disappearing with the spread of indifferentism, and the Protestant Churches have no longer the same influence on the public and private life of the nation. Protestantism has lasted for 400 years, but though it has lasted longer than any other form of belief which took rise in the sixteenth century, it is now also dying.
In 1919 the number of people over seven years of age in England who professed belief in any church was 10,833,795 (out of 40,000,000), and the church attendance equalled 7,000,000, or about 1 out of every 5 people. [103]
Again, a Commission appointed by the Protestant Churches to inquire into the religious beliefs held in the British armies of the Great War has endorsed the following statements: