Birth Control: A Statement of Christian Doctrine against the Neo-MalthusiansSutherland, Halliday
Religion
Birth Control: A Statement of Christian Doctrine against the Neo-Malthusians
Sutherland, Halliday
Birth control; Malthusianism
As was proved in a previous chapter (p. 120) artificial birth control was
originally based on Atheism, and on a philosophy of moral anarchy. Further
proof of this fact is to be found in the course of a most edifying dispute
between two rival Neo-Malthusians. This quarrel is between Dr. Marie C.
Stopes, President of the Society for Constructive Birth Control and Racial
Progress, who is not a Doctor of Medicine but of Philosophy, and Dr. Binnie
Dunlop, who is a Bachelor of Medicine: and when birth controllers fall
out we may humbly hope that truth will prevail. Dr. Stopes maintains that
artificial birth control was not an atheistic movement, whereas Dr. Binnie
Dunlop contends that the pioneers of the movement were Atheists. The
beginning of the trouble was a letter written by Dr. Stopes to the _British
Medical Journal_, in which she made the following statement:
"Dr. Martindale is reported in your pages to have given an address to
medical women in which she pointed out that the birth control movement
in England dated from the Bradlaugh trial in 1877. Had she attended the
presidential address of the Society for Constructive Birth Control she
would have learned that there was a very flourishing movement, centring
round Dr. Trall in 1866, years before Bradlaugh touched the subject,
and also a considerable movement earlier than that. This point is
important, as 'birth control' has hitherto (erroneously) been much
prejudiced in popular opinion by being supposed to be an atheistical
movement originated by Bradlaugh." [108]
Dr. Stopes, who has been working overtime in the attempt to obtain some
religious sanction for her propaganda, is ready not only to throw the
Atheists overboard, but also to assert that a flourishing movement for
artificial birth control centred round the late Dr. Trall, who was a
Christian. Her letter was answered by Dr. Binnie Dunlop as follows:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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