BIRTH CONTROL

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume LXXXI, Issue 19033, 10 June 1924, Page 7

BIRTH CONTROL

DISCUSSION IN COPEO CONFERENCE. A MEDICAL VIEWPOINT. LONDON, April 27. It was inevitable that the Conference on Christian Politics, Economics, and Citizenship, which has created a good deal of interest and discussion, should deal with the question of birth control. Professor W. F. Lofthouse, chairman of the Commission on the Relation of the Sexes, said that the commission were conscious of decided differences of opinion both as regards divorce and the other burning question. “We all agreed,” he stated, “that marriage ought normally to involve parenthood, that marriage where there are no children loses something very precious, and that any refusal to have children based on self-indulgence or shirking of duty is indefensible; but some, not all, would go further and say that marriage exists primarily for the production and rearing of children. Then, if the birth of children is feared on physical or economic grounds, we had to admit that for such fears there are often in the present state of society abundant reasons. Is all physical intimacy then to come to an end? Some would say ‘Yes,’ for marriage that does not ac- ( cept parenthood is sinful; others ‘No,’ for marriage that does not involve such intimacy entails great perils; others again would say ‘Yes, at least in most cases,’ for both the value and the effectiveness of contraceptives are uncer* tain; their use is justifiable only when they are the sole means of avoiding serious harm, and then they had better be regarded as doctors would regard a drug. Here also then we differ.” The Rev. R. S. Studdart Kennedy, who is popularly known as “Woodbine Willie,” declared that the conference could not taboo the question of birth control. “If you are going to ask married men and women ro observe celibacy over long periods of years,” ne proceeded, “I beg you for God’s sake to be careful how you ask people for it. Do you believe that to bring children into the Vorld as they are brought in is in accordance with the law of God? Do you think that the population of China is in accordance with the law of God? For God’s sake think about these terms before you use them loosely. In these matters people differ temperamentally and constitutionally more than in any other respect. The way the question of birth control is being conducted is a damnable scandal, and is now playing the very devil with the nation, and the question which really faces us is whether we can control birth control. The present way the means are advertised and sold is the way to get them into the hands of the wrong people in the worst way.”

CHURCH MUST FACE FACTS. Mrs. E. F. Wise, a member of the Home Commission, moved the following resolution:—“ln view of the difficulty of the moral issues involved in the practice of conception control in marriage, and especially the use for this end of contraceptives, and the insufficiency of evidence which would justify any decision, the conference, whilst refraining from expressing any condemnation of those who, with a due sense of moral responsibility, approved such a practice, urges the churches here represented either severally or unitedly to investigate thoroughly and to consider, with the intention of offering definite guidance to perplexed consciences, this and other relevant questions regarding marriage and parenthood. It would meanwhile lay emphasis on the privileges and obligations of Christian parenthood.”

Mrs. Wise said that in all classes of society the question was agitating the minds of all thoughtful married people, and it would be disastrous if that great conference absolutely refused to issue any recommendation on the subject at all. They all knew the information was being given, and in a thoroughly undesirable form, and Chris- , tian people could not escape part of the blame, because they had been too pure minded in those matters, and people who should have looked to them for guidance had gone shame-facedly about it in the wrong way. They could not stand aside, nor could they condemn without adequate knowledge of the facts. It was no good the churches shutting themselves up and judging the question only from the JlhccfLogical point of view. They had to face facts, and not deal with the world as they would like it to be. They had no right to tell the poorest women in the land, that it was the law of God that they should bear a child every year, but they could never advocate the issue of contraceptives for selfish ends.

PHYSICIAN’S OPINION. Dr. Charles E. Gray, a member of the commission and chairman of the Medical Advisory Sub committee of the Charity Organisation Society, said in another 10 years or so the vast majority of the women of this country would be using these methods. There was no question here of selfish indulgence. People who decided on limitation of families at the commencement of their married lives were acting not only foolishly but most wrongly, but there was in time an inevitable alternative that had got to be faced when a couple would have to decide whether or not they must limit their families. The first was absolute abstention and the second the use of contraceptive methods. “I am,” he said, “a practising physician, and without the slighest hesitation I rule out the first. At any rate, for the vast majority of people absention is not only deleterious for health, but is undesirable for other reasons. When I have men or women come to me with some nervous disturbance I have to inquire whether their sex life is normal. No couple who are abstaining have a normal sex life. I am perfectly certain that abstention alters the psychochological relationship between men and women, and prevents them obtaining what is best in married life. If this is so, I do not see what is left but my other alternative. There is a fear of an enormous increase of irregular

relations entertained by some, but the condemnation of contraceptives would have no effect because the tear of maternity is no longer present with those who so indulge. RIGHT OF THE POOR. Miss Margaret E. Roach, of Winchester said if Christian people came to consider the use of contraceptives right in marriage, how could they consider them reasonably wrong out of marriage. Every boy and girl in the country knew where they could be bought. Their use was no new thing, but what was new in modern life was that Christian people were found to advocate them, and that had made it extraordinarily difficult for the young, because self-control for young men and women was not an easy thing. Dr. W. H. Tyson (National Assembly of the Church of England) said Miss Roach made a great mistake when comparing the married with the unmarried. "I do not consider, as a medical man,” he said, "that it is possible foi two people to live together for any length of time and not have sexual intercourse. This question encroaches on all the subjects you are discussing—housing, wages, poverty—and do you mean to tell me the women living in circumstances which are not fit to put dogs in are of necessity, because abstention is impossible, to have 12, 14, or 20 children? It is not true to say this practice is not being carried out by the vast majority of respectable people, and if you do it the poor have the right to do it.” The Rev. W. J. W. Tunnicliffe (Industrial Christian Fellowship) declared that there was one great branch of the Church which was absolutely emphatic in condemning the r.se of contraceptives within the marriage state.

THE END, RACE SUICIDE. Canon Lacey said he did not believe a word of what Dr. Gray had said about abstinence in marriage being either impossible or harmful. The physician was generally acquainted with the abnormal, and we did not want to legislate for neurasthenics. If the doctor meant his statement to Zpply to normal people he did not believe it. The Church could not stop the practice any more than it could any other sin, but that resolution was drawn up with a view to the Church approving of this evil.—(Cries of “No.”) What was to be the end of it all? What were the lessons of history ! The end of it was rapidly approaching in France, just as the end. came for the Roman Empire. Where the practice prevailed that was the only termination, and we should suffer it as well. The end was race suicide.

An amendment was moved to the resolution to delete the words after “contraceptives” “and the insufficiency of evidence which would justify any decision,” and then, after the next word, “conference,” to delete the words “whilst refraining from expressing any condemnation of those who, with a due sense of moral responsibility, approve such a practice.” This was carried, and the resolution, as amended, was passed by a large majority.