Woman / Her Sex and Love Life

by William J. Robinson

And such tragedies are of daily occurrence. May the Lord have mercy on the souls of those who are responsible for them.

Before I proceed further I wish to say that it is the terrible prevalence of the abortion evil, with its concomitant evils of infection, ill health, chronic invalidism and death, that more than any other single factor urges us in our birth control propaganda. And those who want to forbid the dissemination of any information about the prevention of conception are playing directly into the hands of the professional abortionists. They could not act any more zealously if they were in league with the latter and were paid by them. And having mentioned the subject of abortion, I wish to utter a note of warning. In our birth control propaganda, we must be very careful to keep the question of the prevention of conception and of abortion separate and apart. The stupid law puts the two in the same paragraph, some ignorant laymen and equally ignorant physicians treat the two as if they were the same thing, but we, in our speeches and our writings, must keep the two separate, we must show the people the essential difference between prevention and abortion, between refraining from creating life and destroying life already created; we must show the viciousness of meting out the same punishment for two things which are fundamentally different, different not only in degree but in kind—and it is only by thus keeping the two things apart, by showing that we stand for one thing—prevention—and not for the other—abortion, that we can ever gain the general sympathy of the public and the co-operation of the legislators. I do not say that there are not many cases in which the induction of abortion is not only justifiable, but imperative; but that is a different question, and the two issues must not be confused. And we would and should resent any attempt on the part of either enemy or friend to so confuse them.

Case 2. Mr. A. and Miss B. are in love with each other. But they cannot get married, for his salary is too small. They might risk getting married, if the specter of an indefinite number of children did not stretch out its restraining hand. She comes from a good family, she was brought up, if not in the lap of luxury, in the lap of comfort and coziness, and it is the ambition of every good American to furnish his wife at least as good a home as her father gave her. Her father, by the way, died prematurely from overwork in trying to give all possible comforts and advantages to a bevy of six unmarried and marriageable daughters.

As I said, the fear of children kept them back. Each year the hope revived that in another year their union in matrimony would be consummated. But the years passed. Mr. A.'s hair became thin and grayish, Miss B began to look haggard and pinched—and still the marriage could not take place. Miss B was very religious and very proper, and would not do anything that was improper. A was not quite so proper; he paid occasional visits elsewhere, and as instruction in venereal prophylaxis was not included in his college course, he acquired a gonorrhea, which it took him about six months to get rid of. To shorten the story, A was thirty-nine and Miss B was thirty-five when the many times postponed marriage was consummated, but Cupid seemed to be busy elsewhere when the ceremony took place, and there is very little romance in their married life. The marriage has remained childless, as I told Mr. A it would be.

I consider this a ruined life—and all for the lack of a little knowledge.

If the anti-preventionists, those who are opposed to any information about the prevention of conception, were not so hopelessly stupid, they would see that from their own point of view it would be better if such information were legally obtainable. For it would be instrumental in causing more marriages which otherwise remain unconsummated, and by favoring early marriages, it would be instrumental in curtailing the demand for prostitution, in diminishing venereal disease. And as is well known, venereal disease is one of the great factors in race suicide.

Case 3. A young woman was married to a man who besides being a brutal drunkard was subject to periodic fits of insanity. Every year or two he would be taken to the lunatic asylum for a few weeks or months, and then discharged. And every time on his discharge he would celebrate his liberty by impregnating his wife. She hated and loathed him, but could not protect herself against his "embraces." And she had to see herself giving birth to one abnormal child after another. She begged her doctor to give her some means of prevention, but that boob claimed ignorance, and the illegality of the thing. The woman finally committed suicide, but not before she had given birth to six abnormal children, who will probably grow up drunkards, criminals or insane.

And because we object to such kind of breeding, we are accused of being enemies of the human race, of advocating race suicide, of violating the laws of God and man. Oh, for a mighty Sampson to strike the imbeciles with the jaw of an ass, for a mental Hercules to loosen the fontanelles of their petrified skulls and put some sense into them!

Case 4. This observation concerns a couple both of whom had a very bad heredity. The blood of each was badly tainted. The doctor who had treated the husband cautioned them and told them that they had no right to have children. But here the tables were turned. The doctor wanted to give them the means for prevention, but the husband and wife, pious Roman Catholics, would not go against their religion and God (as if God wanted a world full of imbeciles), and refused to employ any precautions. They have had four children so far. One of them seems fairly normal, except that he is silly, in which respect he is merely like his parents; two are deaf and blind in one eye; the fourth is a cretin, practically an idiot.

This case brings us face to face with another phase of the problem. What should we do when the parents, stupid and ignorant, refuse to stop breeding worthless material? Eugenic agitation, education, will bring about such a strong public opinion that none but idiots, who will be vasectomized or segregated, will dare to bring into the world children that are physically and mentally handicapped.