Advocates of Birth Control offer and
accept no such superficial solution. This philosophy is based upon
a clearer vision and a more profound comprehension of human life. Of
immediate relief for the crushed and enslaved motherhood of the world
through State aid, no better criticism has been made than that of
Havelock Ellis:
"To the theoretical philanthropist, eager to reform the world on paper,
nothing seems simpler than to cure the present evils of child-rearing
by setting up State nurseries which are at once to relieve mothers of
everything connected with the men of the future beyond the pleasure--if
such it happens to be--of conceiving them, and the trouble of bearing
them, and at the same time to rear them up independently of the home, in
a wholesome, economical and scientific manner. Nothing seems simpler,
but from the fundamental psychological point of view nothing is
falser.... A State which admits that the individuals composing it are
incompetent to perform their most sacred and intimate functions, and
takes it upon itself to perform them itself instead, attempts a task
that would be undesirable, even if it were possible of achievement.(4)"
It may be replied that maternity benefit measures aim merely to aid
mothers more adequately to fulfil their biological and social functions.
But from the point of view of Birth Control, that will never be possible
until the crushing exigencies of overcrowding are removed--overcrowding
of pregnancies as well as of homes.
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