To combat the evils of infant mortality, natal and
pre-natal care is not sufficient. Even to improve the conditions for the
pregnant woman, is insufficient. Necessarily and inevitably, we are led
further and further back, to the point of procreation; beyond that, into
the regulation of sexual selection. The problem becomes a circle. We
cannot solve one part of it without a consideration of the entirety. But
it is especially at the point of creation where all the various
forces are concentrated. Conception must be controlled by reason, by
intelligence, by science, or we lose control of all its consequences.
Birth Control is essentially an education for women. It is women who,
directly and by their very nature, bear the burden of that blindness,
ignorance and lack of foresight concerning sex which is now enforced
by law and custom. Birth Control places in the hands of women the
only effective instrument whereby they may reestablish the balance in
society, and assert, not only theoretically but practically as well, the
primary importance of the woman and the child in civilization.
Birth Control is thus the stimulus to education. Its exercise awakens
and develops the sense of self-reliance and responsibility, and
illuminates the relation of the individual to society and to the race in
a manner that otherwise remains vague and academic. It reveals sex not
merely as an untamed and insatiable natural force to which men and women
must submit hopelessly and inertly, as it sweeps through them, and then
accept it with abject humility the hopeless and heavy consequences.
Pages:
177
178
179
180
181
182
183
184
185
186
187
188
189
190
191
192
193
194
195
196
197
198
199
200
201