Contraception

“ It is the experience of modern women that sex is an instinctive need to them as it is to men, and further that the prevention of conception brings to them no loss of poise, health, or happiness. On the contrary, when once they embark on the task of maternity, contraception is a blessed safeguard to health and recovery in the periods of rest between pregnancies. ”

“ If a woman wants contraception for either birth control or other health purposes--and most women use it for other health purposes--it is up to that woman, not her employer. That is the bottom line. The vast majority of Americans, men and women, agree with that statement. ”

“ The tacit assumption when you obtain a diaphragm is that you are accepting the responsibility 258 for contraception. There is rarely any need, other than a negative one on the woman’s part, for this to interfere or to impinge on sexual intercourse in any manner. The husband is quite correct who interprets chronic remissiveness of this sort as an unsolved problem of his wife. ”

“ It is clear that the implications of Birth Control, or, rather, what is generally, though not logically understood [2] by the term, of the practice of contraception, are far reaching. It profoundly affects the life of the individual; it reacts upon the internal economy of the community ”

“ This is about women's health, and women and men all over America are scratching their heads and saying: Are we fighting against contraception? Are we turning the clock back 60 or 70 years? It makes no sense. ”

“ I think another impact that it's really important that we all think about, is that contraception when it first became available was a revolution in this country. It allowed women to enter employment and educational opportunities that had previously not been accessible because they were unable to control their reproduction in the same way. ”

“ The advocates of Birth Control seek to place upon a scientific basis, under cover and protection of the law, a subject which heretofore has been but imperfectly known, and more imperfectly practiced in some form by the majority of married couples, and which has heretofore been under condemnation of the law so far as concerned the actual dissemination of information concerning methods of contraception. ”

“ Specialists are so busy with their own particular subjects and general practitioners are so taken up with their daily routine that they cannot give to the problem of contraception the attention it must have. Consultation rooms in charge of reputable physicians who have specialized in contraception, assisted by registered nurses—in a word, clinics designed for this specialty, would meet this crying need. Such clinics should deal with each woman individually, taking into account her particular disease, her temperament, her mentality and her condition, both physical and economic. ”

“ Harris. “You know that the laws of New York State are that contraception may be given only for the cure or prevention of disease. Do you dare to claim this article will cure tuberculosis? Will it cure cancer, high blood pressure, heart disease, kidney disease?”
Again came mirth. No one assumed a pessary or any other form of contraceptive could effect a cure. “But,” replied Dr. Harris, “in preventing conception it may be said to cure because pregnancy can often be the cause of furthering the progress of a disease.” ”

“ While it is not the function of this Committee to report upon the wider aspect of contraception, but to deal with it only in relation to the abortion problem, yet we would point out that the evidence given showed that, though contraception is widely practised, many of the methods used are unreliable and not founded upon physiological knowledge, and that when they fail abortion is resorted to. Abortion is a delayed, dangerous, and unsatisfactory form of birth-control. ”

“ Certain it is that a large percentage of the children born are unwanted, and equally certain that among the very poor ignorance of contraception is such as to appear incredible to those who have not had personal experience of it. ”

“ ARHP Brief 34-35. Other contraceptive methods that may prevent implantation include "morning-after pills," high-dose estrogen pills taken after intercourse, particularly in cases of rape, ARHP Brief 33, and the French RU 486, a pill that works "during the indeterminate period between contraception and abortion," id. at 37. Low-1evel estrogen "combined" pills -- a version of the ordinary, daily ingested birth control pill -- also may prevent the fertilized egg from reaching the uterine wall and implanting. ”

“ The objection is frequently heard that the general knowledge of scientific methods of contraception would lead to increased illicit relations among unmarried persons, particularly among the young people. This argument is apparently based upon the belief, or fear, that the fear of conception is the only thing which prevents many persons from indulging in illicit relations. It assumes that a large portion of our womankind are chaste simply because of fear of pregnancy ”

“ The State, on the other hand, asserts that it is acting to protect the moral welfare of its citizenry, both directly, in that it considers the practice of contraception immoral in itself, and instrumentally, in that the availability of contraceptive materials tends to minimize 'the disastrous consequence of dissolute action,' that is fornication and adultery. ”

“ Appellant insists that the unmarried have no right to engage in sexual intercourse and hence no health interest in contraception that needs to be served. The short answer to this contention is that the same devices the distribution of which the State purports to regulate when their asserted purpose is to forestall pregnancy are available without any controls whatsoever so long as their asserted purpose is to prevent the spread of disease. ”

“ Although the law forbids information concerning reliable means of contraception, it is hardly likely that it can be invoked to prevent warnings against widely practiced methods which are NOT reliable. The employment of such methods leads not only to disappointment but often to ill health. ”

“ Almost wherever I am, the subject of birth control comes up sooner or later, and it did on this occasion. Lady Astor seemed to think her religion forbade her believing in it. “If they want babies, let them have babies. If they don’t want them, let them practice continence.”
“Even accepting that continence is the ultimate ideal,” I replied, “wouldn’t you agree that contraception as an immediate necessity to help millions of women is of equal importance with wearing glasses to read the Bible? As a good Christian Scientist you should not use them. ”

“ All we can do is to make and keep these women clean. If we decline to do even that, then diseased women will succeed in contaminating our men much faster than we can instruct the men in sexual cleanliness. [B]
And again, just as the medical prevention of venereal disease was not proposed, and has not been applied for the purpose of fostering or condoning promiscuous intercourse, [C] so the conscious control of fecundity by contraception must not be applied in such a way as to lessen the proportion of well-born citizens in the nation taken as a whole. ”

“ They did not know enough to prevent conception, but they did the best they could by means of abortion and infanticide. And because today superstition keeps the priceless knowledge of contraception from the vast majority of women, these crude, savage methods still prevail, and we have our million abortions a year in the United States. Assuming that something near one-fourth our population consists of women capable of bearing children, we have one woman in twenty-five going through this agonizing and health-wrecking experience every year. ”

“ What can a physically weaker and spiritually stronger woman do even if she desires continence with her whole soul, but her husband will have none of it? Is it not then her duty to protect herself in order that she may not give birth to a weakly progeny?
HARPER’S WEEKLY. 1915.
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. ”

“ There is much interest now being taken by thinking people in some phases of the general subject of semi-continence, and many thoughtful and conscientious persons find in it at least the promise of a worthy and honest solution of the problem of Continence as applied to Birth Control. Such persons claim to find in this general class of Birth Control methods a happy medium between the rigid practice of absolute Continence in the marriage relations, on the one hand, and the more popular methods of Contraception, on the other hand. ”

“ Even in those forms or phases of the Birth Control propaganda in which the use of "contraceptives," or "preventatives" is considered justified in certain cases—and these forms and phases are far from being the most important, as all students of the subject know—even in these exceptional forms and phases of the general subject the idea of abortion is combatted, and never justified or encouraged. A "contraceptive" agency merely tends to prevent or obviate undesirable conception; it never acts to destroy the result of previous and accomplished conception. ”

“ The signs of delivery that are well marked at the full period, the general symptoms then obtaining, the size of the uterus, ascertained by the hand and sound, lacerations of the perineum and cervix, the lochia, the state of the breasts, abdomen, vagina, and vulva, all of little value except in conjunction with each other, are proportionately less defined as we go back, until near the commencement of pregnancy it becomes impossible to distinguish the abortion from severe hemorrhage or from menorrhagia, unless by detecting the impregnated ovum. ”

“ In many cases of sterility it will be found that the number of abortions in a single patient have been almost innumerable; and, it may be added, in a large proportion of the cases of uterine disease occurring in the married, inquiry as to their past history will reveal abortions, unsuspected perhaps even by the family physician, as the cause. It is not so much the general practitioner, the hospital attendant, or the accoucheur, as such, who can testify as to the true frequency of abortion ”

“ As interpreted by the State Supreme Judicial Court, these provisions make it a felony for anyone, other than a registered physician or pharmacist acting in accordance with the terms of § 21A, to dispense any article with the intention that it be used for the prevention of conception. The statutory scheme distinguishes among three distinct classes of distributees--first, married persons may obtain contraceptives to prevent pregnancy, but only from doctors or druggists on prescription; second, single persons may not obtain contraceptives from anyone to prevent pregnancy ”

“ These people shrink at the idea of abortion, and doubt the efficacy of the popular so-called contraceptive methods of which their friends tell them, and they either defer the marriage until later in life, or else give up the idea altogether as being impossible for them under the existing circumstances. A scientific knowledge of the subject would give to such persons—and there are many thousands of such—an assurance of their ability to safely and properly control and regulate the size of their families, and would lead to many a marriage which would otherwise be out of the question. ”

“ Let it be distinctly understood that I do not approve any method for preventing pregnancy except that of abstinence, nor any means for producing abortion, on the ground that it is or can be in any sense physiological. It is only the least of two evils. ”

“ By no means unimportant is the influence that wide diffusion of the knowledge of how to prevent conception would have in causing more irregular unions and greater promiscuity in sex relations. The effect of this would not only loosen, rather than strengthen, the marriage tie, but would inevitably lead to an extension of venereal disease. Many people seem to think that contraceptives prevent venereal disease at the same time that they prevent conception. But this is not so. The use of methods of prevention by women is no protection to them from infection. ”

“ Thus the revulsion of feeling against the use of contraceptives is experienced chiefly by the woman who has had either no children or few children. On the other hand, the woman who has the greatest need for a knowledge of Birth Control is the one who has had many children and desiring no more would probably feel little or no aversion from taking precautions against conceiving them. It appears to the writer that there is no adequate objection to communicating to such [44] a multiparous mother this much needed information. ”

“ As only the very weak-minded or very hypocritical offer as a remedy for frequent pregnancy male continence, we shall not even consider for one minute such an absurd, abnormal, biologically immoral solution.
The Only Solution. The only other solution which has ever been proposed is a system of sexual [Pg 293] enlightenment which will enable a woman to prevent pregnancy until such time when she feels that she can in justice to herself and to her offspring bear a child, and will, further, enable her to have an abortion performed when, in spite of all contraceptive measures, pregnancy has begun. ”

“ The life of an infant for a long time after birth is a frail one, and before birth its existence is extremely precarious; it often perishes a few days after conception. A period coming on a few days late, and at the same time one which is unusually profuse, is the only evidence which the young wife may have of an abortion. Among prostitutes, the frequent delay of menstruation, then abundant hemorrhage, is in many cases only habitual abortion, and leads to changes in the generative organs which must result in sterility. ”