Ecclesiastical opposition to Birth Control on the part of certain
representatives of the Protestant churches, based usually on quotations
from the Bible, is equally invalid, and for the same reason. The
attitude of the more intelligent and enlightened clergy has been well
and succinctly expressed by Dean Inge, who, referring to the ethics of
Birth Control, writes: "THIS IS EMPHATICALLY A MATTER IN WHICH EVERY
MAN AND WOMAN MUST JUDGE FOR THEMSELVES, AND MUST REFRAIN FROM JUDGING
OTHERS." We must not neglect the important fact that it is not merely
in the practical results of such a decision, not in the small number of
children, not even in the healthier and better cared for children, not
in the possibility of elevating the living conditions of the individual
family, that the ethical value of Birth Control alone lies. Precisely
because the practice of Birth Control does demand the exercise of
decision, the making of choice, the use of the reasoning powers, is
it an instrument of moral education as well as of hygienic and racial
advance. It awakens the attention of parents to their potential
children. It forces upon the individual consciousness the question of
the standards of living. In a profound manner it protects and reasserts
the inalienable rights of the child-to-be.
Psychology and the outlook of modern life are stressing the growth
of independent responsibility and discrimination as the true basis of
ethics. The old traditional morality, with its train of vice, disease,
promiscuity and prostitution, is in reality dying out, killing itself
off because it is too irresponsible and too dangerous to individual
and social well-being.
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