Why continue to send home women to whom pregnancy is a grave danger
with the futile advice: "Now don't get this way again!" They are sent
back to husbands who have generations of passion and passion's claim
to outlet. They are sent back without being given information as to
how to prevent the dangerous pregnancy and are expected, presumably,
to depend for their safety upon the husband's continence. The wife and
husband are thrown together to bring about once more the same
condition. Back comes the patient again in a few months to be aborted
and told once more not to do it again.
Does any physician believe that the picture is overdrawn? I have known
of many such cases. A recent one that came under my observation was
that of a woman who suffered from a disease of the kidneys. Five times
she was taken to a maternity hospital in an ambulance after falling in
offices or in the street. One of the foremost gynecologists of America
sent her out three times without giving her information as to the
contraceptive means which would have prevented a repetition of this
experience.
Why does this situation exist? We do not question the good intent nor
the high purposes of these physicians. We know that they observe a
high standard of ethics and that they are working for the uplift of
the race. But here is a situation that is absurd--hideously absurd.
What is the matter?
Several factors contribute to this state of affairs. First, the
subject of contraception has been kept in the dark, even in medical
colleges and in hospitals. Abortion has been openly discussed as a
necessity under certain conditions, but the subject of contraception,
as any physician will admit, has not yet been brought to the front. It
has escaped specialized attention in the laboratories and the research
departments. Thus there has been no professional stamp of approval by
great bodies of experimenters. The result is that the average
physician has felt that contraceptive methods are not yet established
as certainties and has, for that reason, refused to direct _their
use_.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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