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
When Dr. A. A. Brill, Lecturer in Abnormal Psychology, New York
University, and formerly Chief of Clinic in Psychiatry, Columbia
University, was asked how he regarded contraception in relation to
nervous diseases, he replied emphatically: “You can say that I am for
it. It is much better than an abortion. For instance, I have in mind a
woman who was discharged from the insane hospital. She had three
children and had been three times insane. What chance in life has a
child born between two attacks of insanity, whose mother is mentally
defective? Even sane women, if they are nervous and emotional, should
never bear children against their will. It is foolish to talk about
making people have children when they do not want them. It’s bad for the
woman and bad for the child. It is very bad for a child to be born into
a home where he is not desired. I find that many adult, nervous patients
were unwished-for-children, and it was the early attitude of their
parents toward them that contributed much to their bent toward nervous
invalidism.” In reply to the contention of the anti-regulationists that
contraception is physically and mentally harmful, he stated that certain
methods are injurious, while others are not. He commented on the
unfortunate fact that it is the undesirable methods which are employed
by the poorer people, because druggists put a high price upon the better
means on the plea that they run a risk in selling them at all.
Remembering that Dr. Brill was for years connected with Central Islip,
he was asked if he did not consider it demanding a good deal to expect a
man discharged from an insane asylum and sent home to his wife, to live
a sexually abstinent life. He replied: “Only people who know nothing of
the sex impulse can make such a demand of a person who has a poor mental
organization. Of course it is impossible. It is impossible even for the
average normal man, and especially for those who live crowded in two or
three rooms.”
_THE SEXUAL LIFE. By P. W. Malchow, M.D., Professor of Proctology, and
Associate in Clinical Medicine, Hamline University, College of
Physicians and Surgeons; member Hennepin County Medical Society,
Minnesota State Medical Society, American Medical Association,
etc._
There can be no doubt that the influence of prolonged continence upon
either the male or female is to dwarf and in many respects destroy that
which goes to make a broad and full physical and intellectual
personality and that to perform the sexual act whenever there is an
existing state of sexual excitement, with the usual marital
restrictions, is rather beneficial that otherwise. Page 201.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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