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
"During the years 1901 to 1910, health measures in this zone produced a
very considerable fall in the death-rate, from 30.2 per thousand to
19.6 per thousand; the infant mortality was also reduced very greatly,
and it was expected that, after a lapse of time, the reduction of the
death-rate would result in a rise of the birth-rate, and a
corresponding increase of the population. _But such was not the case_.
When the death-rate fell, the birthrate fell too, and the number of the
population remained the same as before, even after nearly a decade had
passed, and notwithstanding the fact that the whole district had become
much healthier, and one town, Port Said, was converted from an
unhealthy, fever-stricken place into a seaside health resort." [6]
Moreover, Dr. Halford Ross has told me that artificial birth control
was not practised in this region, and played no part in maintaining a
stationary population. The majority of the people were strict Mohammedans,
amongst whom the practice of birth control is forbidden by the Koran.
(b) _In "Closed Countries" like Japan_
But a much more striking example of the population in a closed country
remaining stationary without the practice of birth control, thus refuting
the contention of our birth controllers, is to be found in their own
periodical, _The Malthusian_. [7] It would appear that in Japan from 1723
to 1846 the population remained almost stationary, only increasing from
26,065,422 to 26,907,625. In 1867 the Shogunate was abolished, the Emperor
was restored, and Japan began to be a civilised power. Now from 1872 the
population increased by 10,649,990 in twenty-seven years, and "during the
period between 1897 and 1907 the population received an increment of 11.6
per cent., whereas the food-producing area increased by only 4.4 per
cent.... According to Professor Morimoro, the cost of living is now so high
in Japan that 98 per cent, of the people do not get enough to eat." From
these facts certain obvious deductions may be made. So long as Japan was
a closed country her population remained stationary. When she became a
civilised industrial power the mass of her people became poorer, the
birth-rate rose, and the population increased, this last result being the
real problem to-day in the Far East. In face of these facts it is sheer
comedy to learn that our Malthusians are sending a woman to preach birth
control amongst the Japanese! Do they really believe that for over a
hundred years Japan, unlike most semi-barbaric countries, practised birth
control, and that when she became civilised she refused, unlike most
civilised countries, to continue this practice? There is surely a limit to
human credulity.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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