Debate on birth control. Margaret Sanger and Winter Russell — John Shaqi
Debate on birth control. Margaret Sanger and Winter RussellSanger, Margaret
History
Debate on birth control. Margaret Sanger and Winter Russell
Sanger, Margaret
Birth control -- Moral and ethical aspects
That is one of the great troubles with this volunteer parenthood—it is
that there are so very few volunteers. Mrs. Sanger and I agree upon this
matter of education. She would not say to those who are trying to find
the ready path to health—those who are afflicted with tuberculosis and
venereal disease—that they can reach this road to health by self
control. She says that we will educate you and the feeble-minded about
the most delicate, intricate complications, and disseminate information
and literature that we have on the human body. She thinks she can take
the millions of people and, as a matter of cold fact, introduce this
knowledge. A large percentage of these millions of abortions are due to
the fact that they thought they knew all about it and they didn’t. And
Mrs. Sanger has pointed out that here still is a lot of laboratory
experiments and research work that has got to be done before they will
be absolutely, scientifically sure that they will know just exactly what
they are doing.
I would have them educated, and I would have Mrs. Sanger and all the
rest of them change their views in this connection because of education.
I agree with her absolutely with this. We are handing a marriage
certificate to those who are not prepared to have it. We make a man who
is going to run a steam engine or an automobile or prepare teeth—he has
to have a license. We ought to know about this matter of rearing
children. We ought to have education but it ought to be the education
that will give us the key to self-control and teach us how to take care
of the children after they have come.
And then this matter of the difficulty of self-control. If these people
that have the one or two or three children would take them with joy and
thanksgiving and devote themselves to the higher mental and spiritual
development that ought to come with them, and would have come if they
had been properly educated, the matter of self-control would be a very
simple matter indeed.
Oh, this matter of quality. We are misled on this matter of quality—this
matter of accomplishments. I don’t know how I can possibly impress this
any better than this. I believe that a woman who comes into Ellis Island
and can neither read nor write, and has seven to eight children, is
worth more to the United States of America than a graduate of Vassar
University. I will go further. I say this that if I had not been blessed
with a wife and mother such as Mrs. Russell is, that I would choose for
a wife today—I would rather have a girl that cooks and can’t read nor
write, who loves children, than some of these graduates with
accomplishments.
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