SUGGESTIONS AS TO APPLICATION.
_The State's humanitarian zeal protects the lives and fosters the
fertility of the degenerate._--_A confirmed or hereditary criminal
defined._--_Law on the subject of sterilization could at first be
permissive._--_It should apply, to begin with, to criminals and
the insane._--_Marriage certificates of health should be
required._--_Women's readiness to submit to surgical treatment for minor
as well as major pelvic diseases._--_Surgically induced sterility of
healthy women a greater crime than abortion._--_This danger not remote._
The fertility of the unfit goes on unrestrained by any other check, save
vice and misery. The great moral checks have not, and cannot have any
place with them. But the State is, by its humanitarian zeal, limiting
the scope and diminishing the force of these natural checks amongst all
classes of the community, but especially amongst the unfit, so that its
policy now fosters the fertility of this class, while it fails to arrest
the declining nativity of our best citizens. The greater the fertility
of the unfit, the greater the burden the fit have to bear, and the less
their fertility.
The State's present policy therefore, fosters the fertility of the
unfit, and discourages the fertility of the fit. This disastrous policy
must be changed without delay. The State can arrest the gradual
degradation of its people, by sterilizing all defective women and the
wives of defective men falling into the hands of the law. Mr. Henry M.
Boies in "Prisoners and Paupers" suggests life-long isolation. He
says:--"It is time however that society should interpose in this
propagation of criminals. It is irrational and absurd to occupy our
attention and exhaust our liberality with the care of his constantly
growing class, without any attempt to restrict its reproduction. This is
possible too, without violating any humanitarian instinct, by
imprisonment for life; and this seems to be the most practicable
solution of the problem in America. As soon as an individual can be
identified as an hereditary or chronic criminal, society shall confine
him or her in a penitentiary at self-supporting labour for life.
Every State should have an institution, adapted to the safe and secure
separation of such from society, where they can be employed at
productive labour, without expense to the public, during their natural
life. When this is ended with them, the class will become extinct, and
not before. Then each generation would only have to take care of its own
moral cripples and defectives, without the burden of the constantly
increasing inheritance of the past. When upon a third conviction the
judicial authorities determine the prisoner to belong to the criminal
class, the law should imperatively require the sentence to be the
penitentiary for life, whatever the particular crime committed."
M. Boies defines a criminal as one in whom two successive punishments,
according to law, have failed to prevent a third offence.
If such a criminal is a woman, she should be offered the alternative of
surgical sterility or incarceration during the child bearing period of
her life; if a man, his wife should be offered this remedy against the
procreation of criminals in exchange for her husband, on the expiry of
his sentence, or the protection of divorce.
No woman in the child-bearing period of life should be released from an
Asylum, until this operation has been performed. If a man is committed,
his wife should have the option of divorce or be sterilized before his
release.
A central Board should issue marriage certificates, after consideration
of confidential medical reports upon the health, physical condition, and
family history of the parties to a proposed marriage contract.
Medical officers should be appointed in the various centres of
population by the central Board, and fees on reports should be paid
after the manner of Life Insurance fees.
In fact the Life Insurance system would serve as a good model, for the
establishment of a system of marriage control, and if questions
involving a more detailed family history were added to a typical Life
Insurance report form, it could hardly be improved upon, for the
purpose of marriage health reports.
If upon consideration of the medical report of the contracting parties,
in accordance with the law upon the subject, a certificate of marriage
were refused, a certificate of sterilization by tubo-ligature, forwarded
to the Board by a Surgeon, should entitle to the marriage certificate.
No law should attempt to step in between two lovers, who have become
attached to each other by the bonds of a strong affection, lest a
greater evil befall both themselves and society.
A marriage certificate of health should state the complete family
history as well as the physical condition of the parties to a proposed
marriage, and such certificates should be issued only by the Central
Board of Experts, who would receive the medical reports of its own
medical officers.
When the principle of artificial sterilization is accepted by the State,
the organization necessary to ensure that only the fit shall procreate,
will only be a matter of arrangement by experts.
One danger looms ahead however if the operative means of producing
artificial sterility are popularised.
Every surgeon of experience knows how readily large numbers of married
women encourage surgical treatment for ovarian and even uterine
complaints, if they become aware that such treatment is followed by
sterility. It is not at all an uncommon thing for women in all ranks of
life, to encourage, and even seek removal of the ovaries in order to
escape an increase in the family.
They become acquainted with persons who have submitted to this operation
for ovarian disease, and noting nothing but improvement in their health,
attended by sterility, their intense anxiety to enjoy immunity from
child-bearing makes them eager to submit to operation.
It would be distinctly immoral to sterilize healthy women, who become
possessed with the old Roman passion for a childless life, or who simply
wish to limit their families for any selfish or personal reason.
Any law which recognizes the induction of artificial sterility should
make operative interference with those fit to procreate a healthy stock
an offence.
Induced sterility should rank with induced abortion, and be a criminal
offence, except in certain cases which could be defined.
There is much evidence to suggest that artificial sterilization may
become as a great vice, as great a danger to the State as criminal
abortion.
Artificial abortion, as commonly performed, is a much more dangerous
operation than tubo-ligature. Of the two operations, any experienced
surgeon would readily declare that the latter is the simpler and the
safer; the one less likely to lead to unfavourable complications, and
the one, moreover, that would leave the subject of it with the better
"expectancy of life."
Anæsthetics and antiseptics have made this comparison possible and
true.
Any surgeon who performs tubo-ligature should be liable to prosecution,
unless he can justify his action according to the law relating to the
artificial sterility of the unfit.
While the law would eventually require to be obligatory, with regard to
the absolutely unfit, it would require to be permissive in all other
cases.
Many voluntarily abstain from marriage, because of a strong hereditary
tendency to certain diseases such as cancer and tubercle.
There must of necessity be many on the border-land between the fit and
the unfit, and clauses permitting sterilization under some circumstances
would be required.
CONCLUSION.
In conclusion let us briefly review the whole position taken up in this
imperfect study of a great question.
1. The birth-rate is rapidly and persistently declining.
2. The food-rate is persistently increasing.
3. The declining fertility is not uniform through all classes.
4. The fertility of the best is rapidly declining.
5. The fertility of the worst is undisturbed.
6. The policy of the State is inimical to the fertility of its
best, and fosters the fertility of its worst citizens.
7. The infertility of the best stock is due to voluntary
curtailment of the family, through sexual self-restraint.
8. No such-factor does or can obtain as a check to the fertility of
the unfit.
9. The proportion of the unfit to the fit is in consequence
annually increasing.
10. The _future_ of society demands that compulsory sterilization
of the unfit should be adopted.
11. No method ever tried or suggested offers the advantages of
simplicity, safety, effectiveness, and popularity, promised by
tubo-ligature.
12. The State must protect itself against the collateral danger of
artificial sterilization of its best stock.
The highest interest of Society and of the individual urgently requires
that the size of families be controlled.
The moral restraint of Malthus (delayed marriage) and post-nuptial
intermittent restraint are the only safe and rational methods, that our
civilization can possibly encourage, or physiology endorse.
These methods must of necessity be peculiar to the best class of people.
For the worst class of people, induced sterility, or prohibited
fertility, is an absolute necessity, if Society and civilization must
endure.
Now what are likely to be the results of, first, the moral methods, and,
second, the surgical method of our curtailment.
"It does not appear to me," says Dr. Billings (Forum, June, 1893), "that
this lessening of the birth-rate is in itself an evil, or that it will
be worth while to attempt to increase the birth-rate merely for the sake
of maintaining a constant increase in the population, because to neither
this nor the next generation will such increase be specially
beneficial."
To Aristotle, the great advantage of an abundant population was, that
the State was secured against invasion by numerous defenders.
If we can find no stronger justification for a teeming population than
this to-day, we will be forced to agree with Dr. Billings, that neither
to this nor the next generation, is a great increase especially
beneficial.
But the moral effect of judicial limitation is very great. If men and
women can marry young, one great incentive to vice is removed. If
married people can bear their children when they can best support them,
they will marry when their bodies are matured, and bear their families
when their finances are matured.
For children well provided for, and educated, and born after full
physical and mental maturity in their parents, turn out the best men and
women.
If the conditions of life are made easy, if ease and comfort are
tolerably secured to all, if the strain and stress of life are reduced,
if hardship, poverty, and want are reduced to a minimum, the sexual
instinct and parental love in human nature, so far unimpaired by any
known force, are powerful enough to keep the race alive, and insure a
progressive development.
The greater the proportion and the fertility of the defective, the less
hope for the future. If the fertility of the unfit be reduced to a
minimum, not only will many dreadful hereditary diseases be eradicated,
but the fertility of the fit will receive a powerful stimulus, because
of the great diminution there will necessarily be in the burdens they
will have to bear.
The advantages of sterility to the unfit themselves will, on the whole,
be incalculable. They are self-evident, and need not be dwelt on here.
The whole sum of human happiness would in this way be most assuredly
increased, and the aim and object of all social reform be to some extent
at least, realized.
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