The Case for Birth Control: A Supplementary Brief and Statement of FactsSanger, Margaret
Science
The Case for Birth Control: A Supplementary Brief and Statement of Facts
Sanger, Margaret
Birth control; Eugenics
Statistics appear to show, according to Lancereaux, that a considerable
number of cases of tuberculosis develop solely as a result of pregnancy.
If pregnancy can thus affect health, how much more likely would it be
for the disease to assert itself in a woman who is a fit subject for it,
or in one who is actually consumptive. In the former class are so called
candidates for tuberculosis who have a family history of the disease of
much significance under these circumstances. One should strongly
dissuade girls with tubercular history and antecedents from early
marriage, fearing that repeated childbearing will infallibly light up
the dreaded malady. What has been said of the candidate for tuberculosis
applies with the same, or greater force in the case of so-called latent
tuberculosis and of apparent recovery from the disease. Present
sentiment is beginning to dissuade such women from marriage, not less
for their own benefit than for the sake of posterity, and all organized
movements which are seeking to eradicate tuberculosis from the world lay
much stress on discouraging marriage in tuberculosis suspects. Until
this view prevails there will necessarily be some justification for
interrupting a pregnancy already under way. P. 314.
Sanatoria for consumptives do not care to admit pregnant women, and this
prohibition is equivalent to ranking them as incurable. The fact that a
candidate for tuberculosis runs a very great risk of becoming
consumptive through childbirth is a most stubborn one, and when in
addition to becoming a consumptive herself she also brings into the
world an individual who is likely to become tubercular, it readily
becomes apparent that the question of the propriety of therapeutic
abortion is bound to become an issue in the future in the practice of
obstetrics. P. 315.
EXCEPTIONAL CASES
A tubercular woman may go through gestation with no undue acceleration
of her malady, only to succumb after delivery to acute general
tuberculosis, or acute tubercular pneumonia. P. 315.
Tubercular pregnant women also show no little tendency to abort. P. 316.
_TUBERCULOSIS A PREVENTABLE AND CURABLE DISEASE. S. Adolphus Knopf,
M.D.; Professor of Phthisio-therapy at the New York Post-Graduate
Medical School and Hospital; Associate Director of the Clinic for
Pulmonary Disease of the Health Department; Attending Physician to
the Riverside Sanitorium for Consumptives of the City of New York,
etc. Moffat Yard & Co., 1909. New York._
We have emphasized the fact that tuberculosis is very rarely directly
hereditary, but that what is often transmitted by tuberculous parents is
a weakened system, or physiological poverty. Nevertheless it is evident
that tuberculous individuals ought not to marry, and when tuberculosis
develops in a married couple it is best that they should have no
children. P. 354.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account