Earlier Marriages and Curb on Prostitution. It is generally conceded by students of sociology that earlier marriages tend to decrease the causes of the evil of prostitution, illicit sexual relations, and general sexual morality; and the consequent spread and existence of the venereal diseases which have followed in the trail of such relations. And it is likewise conceded that prostitution is an evil, and a cancer spot upon modern social life, and that venereal diseases constitute a frightful menace to the health and physical welfare of the race. Therefore, it would seem that anything which would promote early marriages among healthy, intelligent young men and women would be a blessing to the race and to society. And as these earlier marriages are unquestionably prevented in a great number of cases by reasons of the fear of inadequate financial support for large families of children, it would seem to follow that the best interests of society would be served by the encouragement by public opinion, under the protection of the law, of the teaching by competent authorities upon the subject of rational and scientific methods of Birth Control.
Health of Wives. The advocates of Birth Control lay considerable stress upon the fact that a scientific knowledge of Birth Control would practically obviate the state of broken-down health so common among married women, particularly among those who have been compelled to bear large numbers of children during the first few years of married life. Many a young married woman is in bad health—often reaching the state of chronic invalidism—as the result of having had to bear too many children, and in too close succession.
Not only is the above the case, but there is to be found on all sides many cases of invalidism and shattered health caused by the horrible practice of criminal abortion. It is doubted whether anyone outside of medical circles can even faintly begin to realize the frequency of this practice of abortion among the well-to-do, and those in "comfortable circumstances"—not to speak of the countless deaths which arise from the prevalence of this curse. Were a physician to even faintly indicate the number of cases coming under his personal professional attention, in which the patient is suffering from the effects of one or more abortions, he would be accused of gross exaggeration, and would be condemned as a sensationalist.
Without going into detail concerning these things, the writer states that it is a matter of common knowledge among physicians that in every large city there are thousands of unscrupulous (including those who call themselves physicians) who are kept busy every week in the year performing criminal operations designed to produce abortions. Some of these practitioners have many regular patients—women who visit them regularly for the purpose of having abortions produced by criminal operations. It seems almost incredible, but it is a veritable fact, that there are to be found many women in the large cities who actually boast to their friends of the number of operations of this kind they have had performed on them.
Surely, any instruction which would prevent the physical breakdown of so many women by reason of excessive child-bearing on the one hand, and abortion on the other hand, would seem to be worthy of the hearty support of society, and the encouragement of its laws, rather than the reverse. So true does this seem, that it is difficult to realize that there are any intelligent persons who would condemn such instruction as evil and harmful to society. That such persons do exist is a striking proof of the persistence of ancient superstitions and the survival and tenacity of old prejudices.
Morality of Married Men. It is a matter of common knowledge among physicians, and students of sociology, that many married men, particularly those living in the large cities, indulge in extra-marital or illicit sexual relations, with prostitutes and other women of loose morals, and this not because these men are naturally vicious, depraved or licentious, but rather because they fear causing their wives to bear them more children—the wives either being in delicate or broken-down health, or else the family already too large to be reared properly in justice to the children.
Many persons who would see only what "ought to be," and who refuse to see "things as they are" in modern society, will be disposed to pooh-pooh the above statement, and to accuse those making it to be sensational or even morbid on the subject. But those who are brought in close contact with men and women, as are family physicians and specialists, as well as honest students of sociology, know only too well that the above is not an over-statement, but is rather a very conservative recital of certain unpleasant, but true, facts of human society.
Justice to the Children. The advocates of scientific Birth Control hold that a scientific knowledge along the lines favored by them would prevent the gross injustice to children which is now only too obvious to anyone who candidly considers the matter without prejudice. The child brought into the world, unwanted, undesired, unprepared for, and unprovided for before and after birth, is handicapped from the very start of its existence upon earth. The present state of affairs works a terrible injustice upon countless children brought into the world in such conditions. Nothing that the present writer could put into words would state this fact more concisely and clearly than the following statement made by Dr. Wm. J. Robinson, a leading authority along these lines, who has said:
"The responsibility of bringing a child into the world under our present social and economic conditions is a very great one. The primitive savage or the coarse ignorant man does not care. It does not bother him what becomes of his offspring; if they get an education, if they have enough to eat, if they learn a trade or a profession, well—if they don't, also well; if they achieve a competence or a decent social position, he is satisfied—if not, he can't help it. God willed it so. But, on the other hand, the cultured, refined man and woman look at the matter differently. The thought of bringing into the world a human being which may be physically handicapped, which may be mentally inferior, which may have a hard struggle through life, which may have to go through endless misery and suffering, fills them with anguish. * * * * *
"We see about us millions of working men and women who go through life, from cradle to grave, without a ray of joy, without anything that makes life worth living. In the higher classes we see a constant, hard, infuriated struggle to make a living, to make a career, and the spectre of poverty is almost as unremittingly before the eyes of the middle and professional classes as it is before the eyes of the laborer. And all over we see ignorance, superstition, beliefs bordering on insanity, hardness, coarseness, rowdyism, brutality, crime and prostitution; prostitution of the body, and what is worse, prostitution of the mind, the hiding or selling of one's convictions for a mess of pottage. And our prisons, asylums, and hospitals are not decreasing, but increasing in number and inmates.