Sterility and conception / by Charles Gardner Child.

  • Child, Charles Gardner, 1873-1941
Date:
1931
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Sterility and conception / by Charles Gardner Child. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    families is changed and in many households marriage is little more than legalized prostitution. So frequently am I consulted by young married people, and even by those contemplating matrimony, for in¬ structions in methods of contraception that I have many times to blush in very shame for my country. To obtain the best that is in the individual and for the continued advancement of the race, purely sexual intercourse must be subor¬ dinated to the great call of parenthood, and not the reverse. When a couple enter into the marriage state, they should accept willingly, hope¬ fully, and with a full realization, all of the responsibilities of common parenthood. At a time when large families were the rule and not the exception as at present, Nature ruled and women bore children whether or no, so that the population increased as God intended it should. In com¬ paratively recent times the death knell of race advance, with “birth control” pulling strongly on the bell rope, has sounded. It is now not only among the educated and professional classes where it originated that birth control is practiced, but it has spread like wildfire through¬ out all classes until “race suicide” is now well under way. Twenty years ago, on my service at the City Hospital, the admis¬ sions to which come from a large area populated by the middle and lower class of manual workers, it was a rare occasion to admit a woman suffering from a criminally induced abortion. To-day my wauls aie often crowded by this class of patients, on many of whom the abortion was self-induced. Eugenics and Birth Control.—Eugenically speaking there is much to be said in favor of birth control as a therapeutic measure, and theie should be no foolish scruples about interrupting a pregnancy when its continuance would involve severe maternal risk. I am also fully alive to the dangers and uncertainties of child-bearing and thoroughly appreciate that the nursing and rearing of the child are full of tedious and anxious moments, but the whole subject deserves a wider consideration from its economical, social, and ethical side than it is possible to devote to it in a book of this character. I hu e can he but little doubt in the mind of anyone to-day that the gospel of sex hygiene needs to be widely preached by those in authority and not left to the hysterical outbursts of ignorant fanatics. To every young person, at a suitable age, should be taught the virtue of sex morality and the sins of sex immorality; the widespread prev¬ alence of venereal diseases and their menace not only to the individual
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