Birth Control Part 11

[Footnote 67: _British Medical Journal_, 1921, vol. ii, p. 93.]

[Footnote 68: _The Small Family System_, 2nd edit., p. 2.]

[Footnote 69: _Supplement to The British Medical Journal_, March 18, 1905, p. 110.]

[Footnote 70: _Common Sense on the Population Question_, by Teresa Billington-Greig, p. 4. Published by the Malthusian League.]

[Footnote 71: _Medico-Legal Society_, July 7, 1921.]

[Footnote 72: _Suppl. Qu_. 49, Art. 6: "_Voluptates meretricias vir in uxore quoerit quando nihil aliud in ea attendit quam quod in meretrice attenderet_" (A husband seeks from his wife harlot pleasures when he asks from her only what he might ask from a harlot). Quoted by the Rev. Vincent McNabb, O.P., _The Catholic Gazette_, September 1921, p. 195.]

[Footnote 73: _British Medical Journal_, 1921, vol. ii, p. 169.]

[Footnote 74: Reproduced in fourth edition, 1861.]

[Footnote 75: _Essays in Medical Sociology_, 1899. Revised and printed for private circulation, p. 95, (Copy in Library of Royal Society of Medicine).]

[Footnote 76: _British Medical Journal_, August 20, 1921, p. 302.]

[Footnote 77: St. Matt. xviii. 6.]

[Footnote 78: _Proceedings of the Medico-Legal Society_, July 7, 1921]

[Footnote 79: "That arrangement of society in which so considerable a number of the families and individuals are constrained by positive law to labour for the advantage of other families and individuals as to stamp the whole community with the mark of such labour we call The Servile State."--Hilaire Belloc, _The Servile State_, 1912, p. 16.]

[Footnote 80: The Secretary of the Malthusian League. Vide _The Declining Birth-rate_, 1916, p. 89.]

[Footnote 81: _The Declining Birth-rate_, 1916, p. 37.]

[Footnote 82: Dominions Royal Commission, Memorandum and Tables relating to the Food and Raw Material Requirements of the United Kingdom: prepared by the Royal Commission on the Natural Resources, Trade, and Legislation of Certain Portions of His Majesty's Dominions. November, 1915, pp. 1 and 2.

My italics--H.G.S.]

[Footnote 83: i.e. grain, wheatmeal, and flour]

[Footnote 84: For particulars of this increase see Canada Year Book 1913, p. 144.]

[Footnote 85: See pp. 387-8 of [Cd. 6588].]

[Footnote 86: Average for period 1907-1910 and excluding British Columbia, where the yield per acre in 1911, the only year for which figures are available, averaged 29-37 bushels.]

[Footnote 87: Including British Columbia.]

[Footnote 88: Below the average. The yield per acre in 1912 was 12.53 bushels, and in 1913 11.18.]

[Footnote 89: The Observer, Nov. 11, 1921.]

[Footnote 90: _Reminiscences of a Highland Parish_, by Norman Macleod, D.D., 1876, p. 27.]

[Footnote 91: Ibid., p. 34.]

[Footnote 92: Ibid., p. 91.]

[Footnote 93: British Medical Journal, August 13, 1921, p. 261.]

[Footnote 94: Leaflet of the Malthusian League.]

[Footnote 95: _The Hibbert Journal_, October 1914, p. 153. My italics.--H.G.S.]

[Footnote 96: Quoted by Professor Meyrick Booth, _The Hibbert Journal_, October 1914, p. 153.]

[Footnote 97: _The Hibbert Journal_, October 1914.]

[Footnote 98: _The Malthusian_, November 1905, p. 84]

[Footnote 99: C.V. Drysdale, O.B.E., D. Sc., _The Small Family System_, 1918, p. 150.]

CHAPTER VIII

THE RELIGIOUS ARGUMENT AGAINST BIRTH CONTROL

Section 1. AN OFFENCE AGAINST THE LAW OF NATURE

Birth control is against the law of nature, which Christians believe to be the reflection of the divine law in human affairs, and any violation of this law was held to be vicious even by the ancient pagan world. To this argument an advocate of birth control has made answer:

"We interfere with nature at every point--we shave, cut our hair, cook our food, fill cavities in our teeth (or wear artificial teeth), clothe ourselves, wear boots, hats, and wash our faces, so why should birth alone be sacred from the touch and play of human moulding?" [100]

Why? For a very simple reason. Birth control belongs to the moral sphere; it essentially affects man's progress in good, whereas all the other things that he mentions have no more moral significance than has the practice of agriculture. Regarded in the light of the law of nature they are neutral actions, neither good nor bad in themselves, raising no question of right or wrong, and having no real bearing on the accomplishment of human destiny. To make no distinction between the merely physical law of nature (expressed in the invariable tendency of everything to act according to its kind) and the natural moral law which governs human conduct, is to p.r.o.nounce oneself a materialist. Yet even a materialist ought to denounce the practice of birth control, as it violates the laws of nature which regulate physical well-being. "But," says the materialist, "it is not possible for anyone to act against nature, because all actions take place _in_ nature, and therefore every act is a natural act." Quite so: in that sense murder is a natural act; even unnatural vice is a natural act. Will any one defend them? There is a natural law in the physical world, and there is a natural law in conscience--a law of right conduct. Certain actions are under the control of the human will, which is able to rebel against the moral law of nature, and the pagan poet Aeschylus traces all human sorrow to "the perverse human will omnipresent."

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, appet.i.tes, and pa.s.sions; 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 unbia.s.sed, it will invariably give the correct answer to any question of right or wrong.

It is possible to a.s.sert, 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 appet.i.te 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 appet.i.te and frustrated the object for which appet.i.te is intended. The practice of birth control is parallel to this piggishness. No one can deny that the s.e.xual 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 att.i.tude 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.