In general, in any country where we find a diminished prolificity a
falling off of childbirth _unaccompanied_ by a decrease in the number
of marriages occurring at the reproductive ages, we may attribute this
decrease to _voluntary restriction of childbearing_ on the part of the
married, or in other words, to the prevalence of "birth control."
This incidentally, is not a theoretical statement, but one supported
by the almost unanimous medical opinion in all countries. Everywhere
and especially here in our own United States, we find evidence of the
extensive employ of "birth control" measures to prevent that normal
development of family life which underlies the vigor and racial power
of every nation. These preventive measures which arbitrarily control
human birth had long been in use in France with results which,
especially since the war, have been frequently and publicly deplored
in the press, and have led the French Government to offer substantial
rewards to encourage the propagation of large families. From France
the preventive practices of "birth control" had spread, after 1870,
over nearly all the countries of western Europe, to England and to the
United States; though they are not as much apparent in those countries
where the Roman Church has a strong hold on the people.
As a general thing, the practice of thus unnaturally limiting
families--"unnaturally" since the custom of "birth control" derives
from no natural, physical law--prevails, in the first instance, among
the well-to-do, who should rather be the first to set the example of
protest against it by having the families they are so much better able
to support and educate than those less favored with the world's goods.
If the evil of voluntary control of human birth were restricted to a
privileged class, say one of wealth, the harm done would, perhaps, not
be so great. But, unfortunately, in the course of time it filters
down as a "gospel of comfort"--erroneous term!--to those whose
resources are less. They accept and practice this invidious system of
prevention and gradually the entire community is more or less
affected.
The whole system of "birth control" is opposed to natural, human and
religious law. Nature, in none of her manifestations, introduces
anything which may tend to prevent her great reason for being--the
propagation of the species. Birth as the natural sequence of mating is
her solemn and invariable law. It is in birth and rebirth that nature
renews herself and all the life of the animal and vegetable world, and
her primal aim is to encourage it. Human law recognizes this