Sex: Avoided subjects Discussed in Plain EnglishStanton, Henry
Science
Sex: Avoided subjects Discussed in Plain English
Stanton, Henry
Sex -- Popular works; Sex instruction
As a general thing, the practice of thus unnaturally limiting
families--"unnaturally" since the custom of "birth control" derives
from no natural, physical law--prevails, in the first instance, among
the well-to-do, who should rather be the first to set the example of
protest against it by having the families they are so much better able
to support and educate than those less favored with the world's goods.
If the evil of voluntary control of human birth were restricted to a
privileged class, say one of wealth, the harm done would, perhaps, not
be so great. But, unfortunately, in the course of time it filters
down as a "gospel of comfort"--erroneous term!--to those whose
resources are less. They accept and practice this invidious system of
prevention and gradually the entire community is more or less
affected.
The whole system of "birth control" is opposed to natural, human and
religious law. Nature, in none of her manifestations, introduces
anything which may tend to prevent her great reason for being--the
propagation of the species. Birth as the natural sequence of mating is
her solemn and invariable law. It is in birth and rebirth that nature
renews herself and all the life of the animal and vegetable world, and
her primal aim is to encourage it. Human law recognizes this
underlying law of nature by forbidding man to tamper in a preventive
way with her hallowed and mysterious processes for perpetuating the
human race. Religious law, based on the divine dispensation of the
Scriptures, indorses the law of nature and that of the state.
We may take it, then, that "birth control" represents a deliberate and
reprehensible attempt to nullify those innate laws of reproduction
sanctioned by religion, tradition and man's own ingrained instinct. To
say that the human instinct for the perpetuation of his race and
family has become atrophied during the flight of time, and that he is
therefore justified in denying it, is merely begging the question. The
instinct may be denied, just as other higher and nobler instincts are
disregarded; but its validity cannot be questioned. Whether those who
practice "birth control" are influenced by economic, selfishly
personal or other reasons, they are offending in a threefold manner:
against the inborn wish and desire which is a priceless possession of
even the least of God's creatures, that of living anew in its
offspring; against the law of the state, which after all, stands for
the crystallization of the best feeling of the community; and against
the divine injunction handed down to us in Holy Writ, to "increase and
multiply."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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