BIRTH CONTROL.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIV, Issue 114, 17 May 1933, Page 19

BIRTH CONTROL.

A letter on the above eiibject signed Trorace" appeared in a recent issue of your journal. It is a letter that makes one wonder for what race your correspondent is working. Possibly he is aware that the Japanese refused admission to Dr. Marie Stopes on the ground that her birth control teachings were indecent and infringed on the proprieties of life. Wittingly or unwittingly, it is for the yellow race that your correspondent is working. "Proirace" -wrongly assumes that the chemists will be the principal supporters of legislation confining the sale of contraceptives to the profession. It nay interest him "to know that when a certain preacher in the South referred to many chemists' shops as "workshops of the devil" because of the nefarious trade in. contraceptives, two leading Chemists called on him to declare that they and those for whom they spoke aid not prostitute their profession by in this traffic. This is a startling revelation. Does "Prorace" suppose that birth control has a very high endorsement as a saviour of the race, wnen the traffic passes from professional men, who, if any, should have -charge of it, to others? Restriction of sale of these things to those who have attained the age of 18 years is not "a peculiar commentary" on the'mentality °i the promoters of the measure in question. Is it because girls of Iβ pease to have the protection of the-law ] n the matter of willing sexual relationship that the State should permit the watering of immoral relationships by facilitating such commerce by the safety of readily available preventives? license will 'be to '. some ■ extent restrained by the fear of consequences, •to it in the interests of the race, when Joung people are entering a state in which the primary purpose is the probation of children, to educate them in tho matter of thwarting that purpose? Supposing a girl marries at 16, is it Wj se to abet the effort to postpone the consummation of the marriage and leave her without the satisfaction pjf the mother instinct and without "the child that the Creator meant to complete the home and make it a sanctuary 31 love and a wholesome restraint with re gard to tho pursuit of unworthy Pleasure? From 16 to 18 "tho health and strength of the mother" cannot be Plausibly pleaded; moreover, barrenness is frequently the result of artificially thwarting Nature in the first years of the marital relationship. Gibbon was tight: tho precautions for which your correspondent stands are "detestable"; they contributed to the fall of the Roman Empire and will contribute to the fall of our own. Emphatically they wo not "pro-race," but medically unsound and ethically harmful. TRUE PATRIOT.