Birth control : its medical and ethical aspects / by a doctor and by a priest.

Date:
1931
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Birth control : its medical and ethical aspects / by a doctor and by a priest. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    The “ only”’ child is very far from being the healthiest child. This study would tend to show that many more statistics and facts of a similar nature, collected by reliable public health workers, should be amassed, and that great harm is being done by hasty state- ments based on a priori reasoning. It is not difficult to collect evidence from ou1 greatest medical authorities in the field of gyneco- logy and obstetrics, that is very damaging to the cause of contraception. In the important discussion on sterility at a meeting of the Section of Obstetrics and Gynecology of the Royal Society of Medicine, in May, 1921, Dr. Arthur Giles expressed the view that a nation with a falling birth-rate was usually a decadent nation. Hespoke strongly and definitely about the ill-effects of contraceptives, and of the unhappiness caused by childless marriages. Dr. Gibbons instanced cases where the use of contraceptives had brought on sterility, and said that all newly married couples should be warned that they took precautions against conception at their own risk, and that they could not break physiological laws with impunity. Another authority, Dr. Herbert Spencer, who out of his vast experience is an uncompromising opponent of birth control, corroborated Dr. Gibbons’s statement as to the frequent causation of permanent sterility by preventives. Professor Louise McIlroy also thought that the section should protest against the growing use by women of contraceptives, and dwelt on the many neuroses and illnesses attributable to the false stimu- lation of the sex instinct. 3
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