1. A COMMON QUESTION.--The question is often asked, "Can Conception
be prevented at all times?" Let us say right here that even if such an
interference with nature's laws were possible it is inadmissible, and
never to be justified except in cases of deformity or disease.
2. FALSE CLAIMS OF IMPOSTERS.--During the past few years a great deal
has been written on the subject, claiming that new remedies had been
discovered for the prevention of conception, etc., but these are all
money making devices to deceive the public, and enrich the pockets of
miserable and unprincipled imposters.
3. THE TRUTH OF THE MATTER.--Dr. Pancoast, an eminent authority,
says: "The truth is, there is no medicine taken internally capable of
preventing conception, and the person who asserts to the contrary, not
only speaks falsely, but is both a knave and a fool."
4. FOOLISH DREAD OF CHILDREN.--What is more deplorable and pitiable
than an old couple childless? Young people dislike the care and
confinement of children and prefer society and social entertainments
and thereby do great injustice and injury to their health. Having
children under proper circumstances never ruins the health and
happiness of any woman. In fact, womanhood is incomplete without them.
She may have a dozen or more, and still have better health than before
marriage. It is having them too close together, and when she is not in
a fit state, that her health gives way.
5. SELF-DENIAL AND FORBEARANCE.--If the husband respects his wife he
will come to her relief by exercising self-denial and forbearance, but
sometimes before the mother has recovered from the effects of bearing,
nursing and rearing one child, ere she has regained proper tone and
vigor of body and mind, she is unexpectedly overtaken, surprised by
the manifestation of symptoms which again indicate pregnancy. Children
thus begotten cannot become hardy and long-lived. But the love that
parents may feel for their posterity, by the wishes for their success,
by the hopes for their usefulness, by every consideration for their
future well-being, let them exercise caution and forbearance until
the wife becomes sufficiently healthy and enduring to bequeath her own
rugged, vital stamina to the child she bears in love.
6. A WRONG TO THE MOTHER AND CHILD.--Sometimes the mother is diseased;
the outlet from the womb, as a result of laceration by a previous
child-birth, is frequently enlarged, thus allowing conception to take
place very readily, and hence she has children in rapid succession.
Besides the wrong to the mother in having children in such rapid
succession, it is a great injustice to the babe in the womb and the
one at the breast that they should follow each other so quickly that
one is conceived while the other is nursing. One takes the vitality of
the other; neither has sufficient nourishment, and both are started in
life stunted and incomplete.
7. FEEBLE AND DISEASED PARENTS.--If the parties of a marriage are both
feeble and so adapted to each other that their children are deformed,
insane or idiots, then to beget offspring would be a flagrant wrong;
if the mother's health is in such a condition as to forbid the right
of laying the burden of motherhood upon her, then medical aid may
safely come to her relief.
8. "THE DESIRABILITY AND PRACTICABILITY of limiting offspring," says
Dr. Stockham, are the subject of frequent inquiry. Fewer and better
children are desired by right-minded parents. Many men and women, wise
in other things of the world, permit generation as a chance result
of copulation, without thought of physical or mental conditions to
be transmitted to the child. Coition, the one important act of all
others, carrying with it the most vital results, is usually committed
for selfish gratification. Many a drunkard owes his lifelong appetite
for alcohol to the fact that the inception of his life could be
traced to a night of dissipation on the part of his father. Physical
degeneracy and mental derangements are too often caused by the parents
producing offspring while laboring under great mental strain or bodily
fatigue. Drunkenness and licentiousness are frequently the heritage of
posterity. Future generations demand that such results be averted by
better prenatal influences. The world is groaning under the curse of
chance parenthood. It is due to posterity that procreation be brought
under the control of reason and conscience.
9. "IT HAS BEEN FEARED THAT A KNOWLEDGE of means to control offspring
would, if generally diffused, be abused by women; that they would
to so great an extent escape motherhood as to bring about social
disaster. This fear is not well founded. The maternal instinct is
inherent and sovereign in woman. Even the prenatal influences of a
murderous intent on the part of parents scarcely ever eradicate it.
With this natural desire for children, we believe few woman would
abuse the knowledge of privilege of controlling offspring. Although
women shrink from forced maternity, and from the bearing of children
under the great burden of suffering, as well as other adverse
conditions, it is rare to find a woman who is not greatly disappointed
if she does not, some time in her life, wear the crown of motherhood.
"An eminent lady teacher, in talking to her pupils once said, 'The
greatest calamity that can befall a woman is never to have a child.
The next greatest calamity is to have one only.' From my professional
experience I am happy to testify that more women seek to overcome
causes of sterility than to obtain knowledge of limiting the size of
the family or means to destroy the embryo. Also, if consultation for
the latter is sought, it is usually at the instigation of the husband.
Believing in the rights of unborn children, and in the maternal
instinct, I am consequently convinced that no knowledge should be
withheld that will secure proper conditions for the best parenthood."
10. THE CASE OF THE JUKE FAMILY.--We submit the following case of the
Juke family, mostly of New York state, as related by Dr. R.L. Dugdale,
when a member of the prison Association, and let the reader judge for
himself:
"It was traced out by painstaking research that from one woman called
Margaret, who, like Topsy, merely 'growed' without pedigree as a
pauper in a village of the upper Hudson, about eighty-five years ago,
there descended 673 children, grandchildren and great grandchildren,
of whom 200 were criminals of the dangerous class, 280 adult
paupers, and 50 prostitutes, while 300 children of her lineage died
prematurely. The last fact proves to what extent in this family nature
was kind to the rest of humanity in saving it from a still larger
aggregation or undesirable and costly members, for it is estimated
that the expense to the State of the descendants of Maggie was over
a million dollars, and the State itself did something also towards
preventing a greater expense by the restrain exercised upon the
criminals, paupers, and idiots of the family during a considerable
portion of their lives."
11. MODERATION.--Continence, self-control, a willingness to deny
himself--that is what is required from the husband. But a thousand
voices reach us from suffering women in all parts of the land that
this will not suffice; that men refuse thus to restrain themselves;
that it leads to a loss of domestic happiness and to illegal amour, or
it is injurious physically and morally; that, in short, such advice is
useless because impracticable.
12. NATURE'S METHOD.--To such we reply that nature herself has
provided to some extent, against overproduction. It is well known that
women, when nursing, rarely become pregnant, and for this reason, if
for no other, women should nurse their own children, and continue the
period until the child is at least nine months or a year old. However,
the nursing, if continued too long, weakens both the mother and the
child.
13. ANOTHER PROVISION OF NATURE.--For a certain period between her
monthly illness, every woman is sterile. Conception may be avoided by
refraining from coition except for this particular number of days,
and there will be no evasion of natural intercourse, no resort to
disgusting practices, and nothing degrading.
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