No—birth control by abstention is either ineffective, or, if effective, is pernicious.
The Home’s True Interests.
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 anæsthetics 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.