What part will birth control play in bringing forth this new standard?
What effect will its practice have upon woman's moral development?
Will it lift her to heights that she has not yet achieved, and if so,
how? Why is the question of morality always raised by the objector to
birth control? All these questions must be answered if we are to get a
true picture of the relation of the feminine spirit to morals. They
can best be answered by considering, first, the source of our present
standard of sex morals and the reasons why those standards are what
they are; and, second, the source and probable nature of the new
morality.
We get most of our notions of sex morality from the Christian
church--more particularly from the oldest existing Christian church, known
as the Roman Catholic. The church has generally defined the "immoral
woman" as one who mates out of wedlock. Virtually, it lets it go at
that. In its practical workings, there is nothing in the church code
of morals to protect the woman, either from unwilling submission to
the wishes of her husband, from undesired pregnancy, nor from any
other of the outrages only too familiar to many married women. Nothing
is said about the crime of bringing an unwanted child into the world,
where often it cannot be adequately cared for and is, therefore,
condemned to a life of misery. The church's one point of insistence is
upon the right of itself to legalize marriage and to compel the woman
to submit to whatever such marriage may bring. It is true that there
are remedies of divorce in the case of the state, but the church has
adhered strictly to the principle that marriage, once consummated, is
indissoluble. Thus, in its operation, the church's code of sex morals
has nothing to do with the basic sex rights of the woman, but
enforces, rather, the assumed property rights of the man to the body
and the services of his wife. They are man-made codes; their vital
factor, as they apply to woman, is submission to the man.
Closely associated with and underlying the principle of submission,
has been the doctrine that the sex life is in itself unclean. It
follows, therefore, that all knowledge of the sex physiology or sex
functions is also unclean and taboo. Upon this teaching has been
founded woman's subjection by the church and, largely through the
influence of the church, her subjection by the state to the needs of
the man.
Let us see how these principles have affected the development of the
present moral codes and some of their shifting standards. When we have
finished this analysis, we shall know why objectors to birth control
raise the "morality" question.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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