Oddball and Wild Predictions from the Birth Control Review

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Oddball and Wild Predictions from the Birth Control Review
As you look over these predictions, keep in mind that many of the same scaremongering tactics used by Margaret Sanger and her collaborators threats of overpopulation and "differential fertility," among others are being used by pro-abortionists, euthanasiasts, and supporters of racism `contraceptive imperialism' today. Most of these predictions are way off base especially those that promised that contraception would end poverty, war, and unhappiness (remember the same promises made by pro-abortionists in the early 1970s? However, some of the predictions made by writers for the Birth Control Review are eerily

prophetic especially those by opponents of birth control. The best example of this type is the prediction by Monsignor John A. Ryan in the April 1932 Birth Control Review.

1917

"Birth control is the message of a new social philosophy dedicated primarily to the proposition of voluntary motherhood and racial betterment. By its advent a new epoch is dawning in the affairs of men. A new race shall arise, released from the dead weight of poverty, disease, almshouses, asylums, reformatories and prisons. It shall be a race more dynamic in its pro-social impulses, more keen and alert to digest ideas, a race arising from a finer mother- and father-hood, from firesides where children have been wanted and welcomed and reared in an environment of human tenderness and all that that implies."

William Sanger. "Birth Control." Birth Control Review, Volume I, Number 1 (January 1917), page 7.

"Summed up in a word, by "birth control" is meant the regulation of conception by harmless means, with a view to preventing the birth of undesired children. By no stretch of the wildest imagination can it be made to spell abortion or any form of infanticide."

Frederick A. Blossom. "Birth Control." Birth Control Review, Volume I, Number 2 (February 1917), page 12.

"All the children you now see are suitably dressed; they look now as neat as formerly only the children of the village clergymen did. In the families of the laborers there is now a better personal and general hygiene, a finer moral and intellectual development. All this has become possible by limitation of the number of children in these families. It may be that now and then this preventive teaching has caused illicit intercourse but, on the whole, morality is now on a much higher level and mercenary prostitution, with its demoralizing consequences and propagation of continuous diseases, is on the decline."

Dr. J. Rutgers of the Neo-Malthusian League of Holland. "After Thirty-Five Years of Birth Control." Birth Control Review, Volume I, Number 3 (March 1917), page 14.

"One of the strongest arguments of our moralists and purists is that the knowledge of contraception would lead the young to enter upon forbidden sexual relations. Granted that this may happen in a number of instances, the benefit derived from a diminution of venereal diseases, a greater number of happy and successful marriages among the younger people, fewer but better and healthier offspring, instead of an unrestricted procreation of the underfed, the tuberculous, the alcoholic, the degenerate, the feeble-minded and insane, would more than outweigh the isolated instances of sexual intercourse prior to marriage."

S. Adolphus Knopf, M.D. "An Arsenal of Argument." Birth Control Review, Volume I, Numbers 4 and 5 (April-May 1917), page 8.

"Mrs. Margaret Sanger:

"You will think differently about birth control, or the murder of innocent, defenseless children, when you stand before the judgement seat of God and are hurled into Hell.

"Marriage was instituted by God for the propagation of children, and those who do not want children are privileged to remain unmarried or live as virgins.

"You have but one life to live, which will decide your eternity in Heaven or in Hell. Why not spend it doing good instead of evil?

"On Judgement Day, those children you have murdered and have influenced others to murder will stand before you and, pointing their fingers of denunciation at you, demand God to punish you.

"From the instant of conception, a soul is united to the body by almighty God, which you will have to give an account of. Instead of rearing that child for Heaven, you murder it.

"Your money will have no influence with God."

"A Catholic," Louisville, Kentucky, February 13, 1917. Letter written to Margaret Sanger and given the disrespectful heading "The Immaculate Misconception." Birth Control Review, Volume I, Numbers 4 and 5 (April-May 1917), page 12.

"It is sometimes claimed that the dissemination of contraceptive information would cause an increase in prostitution. Abraham Flexner, who made an exhaustive study of prostitution in European countries, declares that Holland, where birth control has been systematically and openly taught for more than a generation, is singularly free from the evil of prostitution.

"`The streets of Amsterdam' he says, `were, at the time of my visit, the cleanest I had anywhere observed.'"

"Birth Control and Prostitution." Birth Control Review, Volume I, Numbers 4 and 5 (April-May 1917), page 15.

"There is still a third major reason why the limitation of offspring appeals to the revolutionist. It would in time make war impossible. International warfare, at all events. Men would be too precious to be conscripted and sent out to slaughter each other. They would be too intelligent to go, even if their rulers were misguided enough to attempt to herd them to the shambles. Birth control is essentially an anti-militaristic philosophy. There is no question in my mind that if it had been universally practiced by the last generation, the present war all Kaisers, Kings, and Presidents notwithstanding could never have been imposed upon the world."

Walter Adolphe Roberts. "Birth Control and the Revolution." Birth Control Review, Volume I, Number 6 (June 1917), page 7.

"... owing to scientific knowledge of birth control, women are saved from the deteriorating and ghastly effects of abortion, which so many women of the United States frequently undergo.

"In the early history of the race, so-called "natural law" reigned undisturbed. Under its pitiless and unsympathetic iron rule, only the strongest, most courageous could live and become progenitors of the race. The weak died early or were killed. Today, however, civilization has brought sympathy, pity, tenderness and other lofty and worthy sentiments, which interfere with the law of natural selection. We are now in a state where our charities, our compensation acts, our pensions, hospitals, and even our drainage and sanitary equipment all tend to keep alive the sickly and the weak, who are allowed to propagate and in turn produce a race of degenerates.

"In this country our stupid and puritanical laws have been the cause of more than fifty thousand annual deaths resulting from abortions."

Margaret Sanger. "Birth Control and Women's Health." Birth Control Review, Volume I, Number 12 (December 1917), page 7.

"Only limitation of births will prevent future European wars ... If people could be made to comprehend that it was the overcrowding of European nations, except France, that caused this war, birth control would become a patriotic duty and an unwritten policy."

A Statement by Wesley Frost, former Consul at Queenstown Ireland. "The Jostling Hordes." Birth Control Review, Volume I, Number 12 (December 1917), page 15.

"But there are still some of us who believe birth control to be a fundamental solution to the problems of poverty, prostitution, child labor, and even war itself."

Margaret Sanger. "Editorial." Birth Control Review, Volume I, Number 12 (December 1917), page 16.

1918

[***] "What is the average family of English intellectuals? About two and one-half. Of French physicians? One and one-half. Of married imbeciles? Six, or seven or eight, depending on the country.

"... we need it [birth control] voluntary or enforced, if necessary by celibacy or segregation, for the seriously defective.

"Such a true radical is the eugenist. His vision is of the voluntary control of the quality of future humanity. He would purge the world of imbeciles, epileptics, and the insane by ceasing to breed them ... he would eliminate in time those of surpassing moral and physical ugliness.

"Godspeed the day when the unwilling mother, with her weak, puny body, her sad, anaemic unlovely face, and her dependent whine, will be no more. In that day, we shall see a race of American thoroughbreds, if not the superman.

"It is a fact. I see it in constant operation all about me. Few of the well-to-do people I know blush to say that they have only as many children as they think they ought to have, or as they personally desire. It is only where women are poor, or tied down by the care of little children, or isolated, or profoundly ignorant, that birth control is not practiced: And just in these places it is most needed, for the welfare of the individual, and of the race."

Anna E. Blount, M.D. "Eugenics in Relation to Birth Control." Birth Control Review, Volume II, Number 1 (January 1918), page 7.

"There is no danger that the race will die off. Parental instinct is too strong and sure for that. Statistics from all foreign countries where birth control is more freely practiced show that with the drop in the birth rate comes a more than proportionate drop in infant mortality. This is due to the fact that parents having fewer children are able to take better care of those they have. The net result is not a decrease, but an increase, in population."

Gertrude M. Williams. "A Summons to Our Women Citizens." Birth Control Review, Volume II, Number 1 (January 1918), page 10.

"Some sixty years ago ... two men issued a pamphlet. That pamphlet was the Communist Manifesto of Karl Marx and Friedreich Engels and last year it hurled Nicolas Romanoff off the throne of Russia forever and ever, amen. It is a truth, and people will listen to truths; slowly but surely they will pay attention and out of these truths will spring Leon Trotskys and Nicolai Lenins and Margaret Sangers despite ... respectabilities who fear intelligence and hate emancipation.

"As I write this article, news comes from Albany that the Supreme Court has declared the penal code which forbids the dissemination of birth control information constitutional. I do not even know the names of the wise and dignified men who arrived at a conclusion long after everyone expected them to do so. You, my reader, do not know their names and probably do not care to. What we do know is, that these well-fed manikins of a dead hand will be in the mud when Margaret Sanger is in bronze."

Louis Weitzenkorn. "The Dynamite of an Idea." Birth Control Review, Volume II, Numbers 2 and 3 (February-March 1918), page 8.

[***] "Knowledge of birth control is essentially moral. Its general, though prudent, practice must lead to a higher individuality and ultimately to a cleaner race ...

"Our laws force women into celibacy on one hand, or abortion on the other. Both conditions are declared by eminent medical authorities to be injurious to health."

Margaret Sanger. "Morality and Birth Control." Birth Control Review, Volume II, Numbers 2 and 3 (February-March 1918), page 14.

[***] "Speed the day when woman shall be free! Then, too, shall man be free and they together, emancipated from the degrading ignorance and superstition of the past, shall walk the highlands of vision, mate in perfect love, and people the earth with a race of gods."

Eugene V. Debs. "Freedom Is The Goal." Birth Control Review, Volume II, Number 5 (May 1918), page 7.

[***] "The Catholic Church is the bigoted, relentless enemy of birth control. It makes no bones about its stand. This [birth control] movement threatens its hold upon the poor and the ignorant, and probably only the existence of restraining laws prevents it from applying the thumb-screw and the rack to all those who believe in woman's right to practise voluntary motherhood. But, since the methods of the Inquisition are out of date, it would compromise by clapping us all into jail. "The birth-controllers are at it again!" runs a medieval editorial in The Holy Name Journal, the organ of one of the most powerful Catholic societies in America. "Prison starvation seems but to have whetted their desire to continue the propaganda for what will ultimately be the extermination of the masses upon which our country must rely in the future." Observe the admission that our propaganda (as the Holy-Namers see it "will ultimately" succeed ... Do we expect ever to win over the Catholic Church to our way of thinking? Not right away. We are aware that it will fight to the last ditch against this ideal. But we propose to go on enrolling Catholics under our banner of progress by the thousands today, by the hundreds of thousands in a year or two. In the long run, reason will inevitably triumph over darkness and superstition. Even the Catholic Church will yield to the force of public opinion."

Editorial Comment. Birth Control Review, Volume II, Number 6 (June 1918), page 16.

"When she [woman], can be made to realize the beauty and to live up to it of making the sex relation spiritually diffusive and not merely physically gratifying, then she is on the way to become the true redeemer of the race. Not by annihilation of the sex function or sex intercourse, but by spiritualizing it.

"The picture every woman should hold up as her ideal is a Goddess radiant with life and love, wearing the sun for a crown and using the moon for a pedestal, at the same time holding aloft, for the benefit of the whole sisterhood of womankind, the serpent twined staff of Mercury.

"It is the divine spark in each human soul that makes that should strive upward for the light. It is confidence in the latent divinity of each human being on the face of the earth that justifies the advocacy of birth control."

Maude Durand Edgren. "Regeneration Through Sex." Birth Control Review, Volume II, Number 7 (July 1918), page 3.

"A generally low birth rate would tend to prevent war."

Editorial. "The Suicidal Birth Rate." Birth Control Review, Volume II, Number 9 (September 1918), page 6.

"If we take the present century, we started in England and Wales with a population of thirty-two and a half millions, which should increase, as shown by the upper line, to six hundred millions by the end of the century, so that the population in England and Wales by the year 2001 should be equal to the population of the entire world in 1901."

C.V. Drysdale. "The Malthusian Doctrine Today." Birth Control Review, Volume II, Number 9 (September 1918), page 14.

"Nothing will permanently affect pauperism while the present reckless increase of population continues."

Milicent Garrett Fawcett. Birth Control Review, Volume II, Number 9 (September 1918), page 14.

[***] "The churches of the various religions have been for thousands of years propagating the idea of peace on earth. They have failed to bring it about despite the tremendous wealth and power at their disposal. Birth control can bring universal peace to us, in fifty years, if labor would include the advocacy of the practice, in its march for emancipation."

"The Failure of the Church." Birth Control Review, Volume II, Number 9 (September 1918), page 16.

"1. The fall in the human birth rate is a world-wide international movement, which has come to stay.

2. It is not due to diminished natural fertility, but to the adoption and spread of birth control principles.

3. It is not a symptom of national decadence, but a mark of advancing civilization.

4. It is the civilized substitute for those natural checks to population scarcity, disease and war which have always operated in the past.

5. Rapidly growing populations in countries with circumscribed territories are a fruitful pre-disposing cause of political unrest and war.

6. Internationally, a competition in birth rates is compared to a competition in armaments, and both are undesirable.

7. The prosperity of this country is absolutely dependent upon a supply of cheap coal. The more rapidly the population in this country increases the sooner will a commencing exhaustion of our coal fields manifest itself.

8. The birth control movement is a natural ally of the maternity and child welfare movement. A low birth rate is closely correlated with a low rate of infant mortality, and vice versa.

9. Birth control is an essential factor in the campaign against poverty. It is calculated to reduce the supply of unskilled labor, to increase efficiency, to raise wages, and to encourage a higher standard of life.

10. Detailed knowledge of birth control is not readily available for the very poor by whom it is urgently needed.

11. Birth control encourages early marriage by removing the fear of a large family. It is, therefore, an important factor in the campaign against immorality and venereal disease.

12. Properly used, and not abused, birth control is a valuable eugenic instrument, capable, by restricting the multiplication of the least fit, of greatly raising the quality of the race."

"`It seems obvious...that anything that reduces the supply of labor and especially the superabundant supply of unskilled and inefficient labor will tend to raise the wages of labor ... If we could abolish this surplus of unskilled labor it would certainly be a very good thing both for unskilled labor as a class, and for the community as a whole.'"

Dr. C. Killick Millard. "Famous British Health Official Advocates World Wide Birth Control." Birth Control Review, Volume II, Number 10 (October 1918), page 8.

"Voluntary motherhood also objects to abortive operations. We further believe that it [voluntary motherhood through birth control] would minimize the number of these illegal acts [abortions] because we stand for education along sex lines by competent teachers."

Rabbi Rudolph I. Coffee, Ph.D. "Voluntary Motherhood." Birth Control Review, Volume II, Number 11 (November 1918), page 11.

"The deeper that thinking minds look into the causes of the Great War [World War I] the more evident it is becoming that the chief cause of the cataclysmic struggle is high birth rates, particularly the high birth rate of Germany. High birth rates means expansion of national boundaries, conquests, annexations, exploitations, and all the manifold oppressions of a militaristic and imperialistic policy.

"Our remedy for prostitution is to encourage early marriage by spreading the knowledge that couples can avoid having any more children than they are able to do justice to."

Editorial. "Birth Control The Cure For War." Birth Control Review, Volume II, Number 11 (November 1918), page 12.

1919

"In the light of the best authoritative information of the day, it can be unequivocally set down that modern birth control methods, properly employed, are not only not injurious but are often positively beneficial to the woman's health.

"Some of the persons who maintain that preventive measures are injurious are so ignorant of the whole subject that they in opposing abortion call it birth control. Still others believe that harmful drugs are given internally as contraceptives. They, of course, confuse abortives with the means of preventing conception. Anyone who knows anything about either birth control or abortion knows that scientific birth control methods would do away with abortions which occur in appalling numbers in America every year.

"It is the consensus of modern medical opinion not only that scientific birth control methods are not harmful but in thousands of cases very beneficial to women suffering from leucorrhea, inflamed cervix, and other local disturbances.

"The assertion that birth control methods induce sterility is equally ridiculous. Many a woman, through the use of scientific contraceptives has so toned up and strengthened her reproductive organs as to become capable of child bearing when she would otherwise had continued barren.

"Scientific birth control is not only harmless but often a direct benefit to the health."

Margaret Sanger. "Are Birth Control Methods Injurious?" Birth Control Review, Volume III, Number 1 (January 1919), pages 3 and 4.

"The burden of excessive children on the over-worked, under-fed mothers of the working classes becomes at last so intolerable that anything seems better than another child. "I'd rather swallow the druggist's shop and the man in it than have another child," as a woman in Yorkshire said.

"It may be admitted that women have an abstract right to abortion and that in exceptional cases that right should be exerted. Yet there can be very little doubt to most people that abortion is a wasteful, injurious, and almost degrading method of dealing with the birth-rate, a feeble apology for recklessness and improvidence. A society in which abortion flourishes cannot be regarded as a healthy society."

Havelock Ellis. "Birth Control in Relation to Morality and Eugenics." Birth Control Review, Volume III, Number 2 (February 1919), pages 7 and 9.

1920

"Europe, according to this authority, has on the average enough food to last until February, after which the aged and the young will begin to die of starvation by the millions! ... In this hour of crisis and peril, women alone can save the world. They can save it by refusing for five years to bring a child into being. And there is no other way."

Margaret Sanger. "A Birth Strike to Avert World Famine." Birth Control Review, Volume IV, Number 1 (January 1920), page 3.

"Within the next few months millions of human beings, mostly Europeans, will starve to death. Food to meet the needs of the Earths' population is lacking and cannot be produced in time to avoid the great crash the crash which will, as its chief incident, cost uncounted millions of lives, and bring in the train of that disaster no one knows what governmental and social changes."

R.C. Martens. "The Coming Crash." Birth Control Review, Volume IV, Number 1 (January 1920), page 5.

"A knowledge of Birth Control, which is denied to the women of Austria, would, of course, wipe out the practice of abortion."

Margaret Sanger. "Preparing for the World Crisis." Birth Control Review, Volume IV, Number 4 (April 1920), page 8.

"Consequently it would seem that the only effective means of restoring the race to health and of keeping it in health will consist in the first place in making the world a fit place for men to live in, by eliminating from our social environment its multiform sources of injury. And in the opinion of the present writer, an opinion in which he is pleased to find that he is supported by ethical no less than by political and sociological considerations, this can be done in no other way than by abolishing the economic struggle for existence together with the institutions of private ownership of land and the means of production and production for profit."

Henry Bergen, Ph.D. "Eugenics and the Social Problem." Birth Control Review, Volume IV, Number 6 (June 1920), page 13.

[***] "It is a noteworthy fact that not one of the women to whom I have spoken so far believes in abortion as a practice; but it is principle for which they are standing. They also believe that the complete abolition of the abortion law will shortly do away with abortions, as nothing else will."

Margaret Sanger. "Women in Germany." Birth Control Review, Volume IV, Number 12 (December 1920), page 8.

1921

"It is a noteworthy fact that not one of the women to whom I have spoken so far believes in abortion as a practice; but it is principle for which they are standing. They also believe that the complete abolition of the abortion law will shortly do away with abortions, as nothing else will.

Margaret Sanger. "Women in Germany." Birth Control Review, Volume V, Number 1 (January 1921), page 9.

"What is your opinion? Your honest, frank, personal opinion, uninfluenced by the newspapers, the preachers, the movies.

"Would the practice of Birth Control lead to general promiscuity?

"Will it change the whole attitude of men and women toward the marriage relation?

"Will it lessen the self-control and self-restraint which is said to be imposed by the fear of pregnancy in case when Birth Control is not practiced?

"Would it lower the moral standards of the youth of the country?"

Unsigned editorial, Birth Control Review, Volume V, Number 11 (November 1921), page 10.

1922

"And the fourth purpose of birth control is, from some points of view especially in view of the present condition of the earth even more important. The fourth purpose of birth control is the prevention of war (applause).

Harold Cox, Editor of The Edinburgh Review. "Birth Control: Is It Moral? A Symposium of Representative Opinion." Speech given at the meeting of the First Birth Control Conference at Park Theatre, New York City, November 18, 1921. Birth Control Review, Volume VI, Number 1 (January 1922), pages 7 and 8.

"I believe that over population is the most serious menace to the peace of the world. It furnishes not merely one motive for war, but the motive which in the end underlies and sustains all other motives, and the only one which makes war inevitable.

"I believe that birth control based upon scientific investigation and the dissemination of scientific information, is the only logical and I should add the only moral and human method of controlling population. The only other method can think of is to allow war and starvation to produce their natural results."

Professor Warner Fite, Department of Philosophy, Princeton University. "Birth Control: Is It Moral? A Symposium of Representative Opinion." Speech given at the meeting of the First Birth Control Conference at Park Theatre, New York City, November 18, 1921. Birth Control Review, Volume VI, Number 1 (January 1922), page 10.

[***] "I believe that no single reform capable of such immediate and wide spread application would so greatly add to the happiness of the human race. There are no panaceas, but Birth Control properly established would go further to eliminate poverty, sickness, insanity, crime, with all that these scourges imply than any other remedy proposed."

"Birth Control: Is It Moral? Dr Ernest H. Gruening's Answers to Mrs. Sanger's Four Questions." Birth Control Review, Volume VI, Number 7 (July 1922), page 133.

"It is difficult to study the history of India and China and not come to the conclusion that much of the misery of these unhappy countries is the result of centuries of uncontrolled breeding of children. Excessive increase of population means periodic visitation of famine and plague and the horrible custom of infanticide.

"If we can restrict the population of each country of the world to a reasonable limit, we may not end war, but we shall at least remove one of the excuses and causes of international conflict."

Sidney E. Goldstein. "Control of Parenthood as a Moral Problem The Case For and Against Birth Control: A Paper Presented at the International Birth Control Conference." Birth Control Review, Volume VI, Number 10 (October 1922), pages 195 to 197 and 206.

1924

"Statisticians predict a New York City of 20,000,000 before fifty years pass" [by 1974].

Arthur Brisbane, quoted in the Birth Control Review, Volume VIII, Number 2 (February 1924), page 47.

"These are the desirable and necessary measures for improving the condition of our fellow citizens, the children of Puerto Rico. But without birth control, the problem of overpopulation of the island will only become more complicated and difficult of solution."

"Porto Rico." Birth Control Review, Volume VIII, Number 3 (March 1924), page 72.

"(1 the maximum population of the globe, about 5,200,000,000, will be reached in two generations; (2 In forty years the population of the United States will be so great that if we maintain present standards of consumption we will have to use every available acre and in addition increase our agricultural efficiency by fifty percent ...

"Again some of them [anti-contraception activists] say that it is wrong to destroy life by abortion as if we advocated that ..."

Rev. Albert P. Van Dusen. "Birth Control as Viewed by a Sociologist." Birth Control Review, Volume VIII, Number 5 (May 1924), pages 133 to 136.

"The Dutch and Scandinavian countries have benefitted by their [birth control] practices, as have also other European nations." [NOTE BY THE EDITOR: The primary "benefit" of birth control is fewer children; today, 33 of 37 European countries have a less than replacement birthrate, and, according to the United Nations, the population of Europe has stabilized and will begin to decline by the year 2000].

"Ancient History of the Birth Control Movement." Birth Control Review, Volume VIII, Number 5 (May 1924), page 138.

"I believe that repeated abortions, however early they are brought on, have a very bad effect on a woman's health. I do not advise it even by skilled hands, unless it has been recommended by your physician. I strongly advise you against taking drugs for such purpose. Drugs are frequently useless and always injurious. They injure the mother, and if they fail their purpose as they often do, they are apt to injure the child. The practice of abortion gets you nowhere ..."

"Margaret Sanger's Own Corner." Birth Control Review, Volume VIII, Number 6 (June 1924), page 181.

"Everett R. Meves, secretary of the Camden Birth Control League and widely known advocate of birth control, made a strong argument for the Malthusian idea at the Y's Men's Club."

"News Notes United States (New Jersey)." Birth Control Review, Volume VIII, Number 6 (June 1924), page 184.

"The following measures, most of them very recent, are provided by law for the aid of large families in France: (1 Reduction of various taxes in proportion to the size of the family; (2 lower rents in the so called "cheap houses" and priority in the assignment of the dwellings in those houses; ... (4 reduction of the compulsory military service by one year in the case of boys who are the oldest of five children ..." [NOTE BY THE EDITOR: France is still giving incentives to have children, and the French still are not listening; France has only one-half the number of children required for a replacement birth-rate].

"News Notes: France." Birth Control Review, Volume VIII, Number 6 (June 1924), page 187.

"Mrs. Thet Jensen is lecturing throughout Denmark on many subjects that concern women. In her lectures she includes Birth Control as one of the fundamental problems of society, of the home and of the individual."

"News Notes: Denmark." Birth Control Review, Volume VIII, Number 6 (June 1924), page 188.

"Two correspondents ... write to protest against an assertion made in the March Review. Both object to our claim that "while other organizations are dealing with the twigs and branches of the evil (war the American Birth Control League is attacking its root.""

"Our Correspondents' Column." Birth Control Review, Volume VIII, Number 6 (June 1924), page 189.

"A considerable part of the work for children in distress is concerned with the problem of illegitimacy. In general, the situation in the United States is not satisfactorily treated by the law or by public authorities ... For constructive suggestions towards reform the example of Sweden is striking."

Elizabeth Pinney Hunt. "Illegitimate Children in Sweden." Birth Control Review, Volume VIII, Number 8 (August 1924), page 224.

"Amongst the better class, birth control has long been an established practice, and it is rapidly growing amongst the better educated working-class citizens. The over-population of this country is becoming a most serious problem. If the population goes on increasing at its present rate there is nothing can save the country from anarchy. Unless birth control becomes more general we shall never catch up with the housing shortage.

The Newcastle Sun, quoted in the Birth Control Review, Volume VIII, Number 9 (September 1924), page 249.

"As surely as the earth's surface is limited, the ultimate checking of the birth rate was from the first, ordained by God. The problem of the physically, nervously, and morally healthiest methods of birth control must be faced.

"When all the evidence in favor of an open-minded and exhaustive inquiry is in, it will be found that there are sure methods of preventing births without foregoing the legitimate pleasures of marriage. These modes, even if not entirely healthy or harmless, are at least infinitely to be preferred to the colossal tragedies wars, disease, countless burdensome lives more or less resulting from the indiscriminate favoring of births.

"True, the actual processes of birth are in God's hands alone. But He preferred to govern its initiation through man. Else why did He entrust the latter to human control? Admittedly, He did not originally give man wisdom in this matter."

"We grant that birth should be controlled by God. The point is that it ought not to be governed by God's lower nature revealed in man's sexual impulse ... But a more searching objection may be raised. The fundamental position that pain is an evil that it exists only for the satisfaction of minimizing it."

Ralph Bevan. "God's Call to Birth Control Eugenics." Birth Control Review, Volume VIII, Number 9 (September 1924), pages 251 and 252.

"Do you know that if your political, educational and economic conditions permit it, Birth Control will cause the patriotic, the prudent, the fatherly and motherly, those endowed by nature with rich unselfish instincts, to beget the majority of the nation's children, causing an increase of morals, intelligence, beauty, unselfishness and all that makes a sound foundation for a great human breed."

"The Danger The Remedy." Birth Control Review, Volume VIII, Number 9 (September 1924), page 261.

"The food problem will be solved by the chemical manufacture of a "completely satisfactory diet," the general nature of which is outlined, and shown to be amazingly near accomplishment already. As a result agriculture will become a luxury and mankind will be completely urbanized ...

"Only the inconceivable eventuality of an alliance of all the other races of the world against the white race could seriously threaten white civilization, and by the time the colored races reach the stage where this would be possible, they will long since have been forced to adopt birth control themselves.

"The white will practice voluntary restriction of their numbers while "uncivilized" races remain prolific, with the ultimate result of the extermination of white civilization by a `rising tide of color.'"

Malcolm H. Bissell. Review of J.B.S. Haldane's book Daedalus or Icarus: Is Science to Be Man's Servant or His Master? Birth Control Review, Volume VIII, Number 10 (October 1924), pages 277 and 279.

1925

"The present food shortage is synonymous with pressure of population and struggle for existence, and is owing to a relatively excessive birth rate; people have more children than they can provide for. Certainly the neo-Malthusians are right in one sense: food supply has increased so slowly that two things are needed for the elimination of poverty; a social system encouraging effort, and a low but eugenically selected birth rate."

"Emigration and the Birth Rate." Birth Control Review, Volume IX, Number 1 (January 1925), page 8.

"Birth Control would prevent also 85 percent of the abortions which occur at the rate of a million a year and which have made the United States notorious throughout the world.

"... the Reverend Charles Francis Potter ... did not ask timidly, ... `Is Birth Control Immoral?' He put his question, `Is Birth Control moral?' It would, he stated, do away with feticide or abortion, our modernization of the ancient practice of infanticide."

"Birth Control for Health and Morals." Birth Control Review, Volume IX, Number 1 (January 1925), page 10.

[***] "J.B.S Haldane, an English scientist, read a paper before the Heretics, nearly two years ago, in which he predicted that it was entirely within the realm of possibility to believe that by the year 1968 new members of our human society would be produced by "ectogenesis," (extra-uterine gestation and further predicted that a hundred and fifty years from now, possibly less than thirty percent of children would be born of women ... may it not be that the "sex uproar," as H.L. Mencken calls it, is the last struggle of love, which may be expected shortly to lapse into a state of apathy?

Percy L. Clark, Jr. "Is Love Worth Saving?" Birth Control Review, Volume IX, Number 2 (February 1925), page 42.

"Many people fear birth control because they are told that it will increase extramarital immorality. They do not stop to consider whether if true (which is open to much doubt this might be a low price to pay for the normal advance gained in avoiding the hideous immorality of enforced maternity and of easing that population pressure which bids fair to be fruitful cause of international discord."

"Population and the Food Supply: National Scientific Bodies Forecast the Future." Birth Control Review, Volume IX, Number 2 (February 1925), page 53.

"No longer is it possible to discuss seriously the cause and cure of War without reference to the world problem of over-population and its only permanent solution Birth Control.

"A moral duty rests with each nation so to limit its own numbers as to avoid conflict with its neighbors. I sincerely hope that this Conference will recognize over population as likely to be an important cause of war in the future ..."

Margaret Sanger. "Editorials." Birth Control Review, Volume IX, Number 3 (March 1925), page 68.

"Of all the facts related to men's material well-being, these two are the most important; First, all life is dependent on the land, that is, upon the various substances of which the earth's crust is composed. Second, these substances are absolutely fixed both in quantity and in their elemental character; they have never been increased or diminished since the foundation of the globe nor can they ever be.

"The earth can support only a certain number of humans, just as of oysters or codfish or rabbits or sparrows. When that limit is reached, some form of control will come into operation. It may be the control of a diminished birth rate or of an increased death rate. In fact, population has never been uncontrolled. Population control is a necessity."

Henry Pratt Fairchild. "The Necessity of Population Control." Birth Control Review, Volume IX, Number 3 (March 1925), page 73.

"The countries of Europe have found that with the loss of so many thousands of young men the protection of the life of babies and young children becomes more than a patriotic duty." Was this by implication a declaration that the child had some rights? In December of that year Herbert Hoover, in an address said: "I believe that the attitude of a nation toward child welfare will soon become the test of civilization."

Birth Control is biologically sound. Preventive medicine must claim it as a part of its work for the welfare of mankind. We are only at the beginning of a long and difficult task of educating and helping those who most need it; the ignorant and the poor."

John B. Solley, Jr., M.D. "Woman, Birth Control, and the Physician." Birth Control Review, Volume IX, Number 3 (March 1925), pages 76 and 77.

"It was the usual argument from such [Catholic] sources; Birth Control is contrary to the Divine Law; it is immoral, will destroy marriage and the home and lead to "free love"; that it is a legalization of sex gluttony; that we need "self control" and not Birth Control; and so on ad nauseam and ad infinitum."

Everett R. Meves. "Birth Control Before Two Legislatures: New Jersey." Birth Control Review, Volume IX, Number 4 (April 1925), page 113.

"Overcrowded Asia will become a menace to the rest of the world unless at the time the Asiatics are shown the means of checking disease and preserving life, they are also made acquainted with the necessity and techniques of family limitation."

Warren S. Thompson. "Overpopulation and Migration as Causes of War: Part II." Birth Control Review, Volume IX, Number 6 (June 1925), pages 171 to 173 and 189.

"Unwanted children there still are, and these usually in the ranks of the most unfit! Doubt it who may, after even a most cursory glance at the brief but appalling record of this Co-operative Social Research! Yet a day is surely coming when in universities there will be chairs for the proper study of "Applied Parenthood.""

"A Review by Virginia C. Young." Birth Control Review, Volume IX, Number 6 (June 1925), pages 179 and 180.

"Experience has amply demonstrated the evils of attempting to suppress the gratification of this impulse, and its utter futility, except in rare subnormal individuals ... To the accusation that the general knowledge of contraceptive practices will increase promiscuity by "making vice safe," we simply reply that the pressure of population leads to celibacy, delayed marriage, and unspeakable housing conditions in which chastity is almost impossible."

Charles V. Drysdale. "The Neo-Malthusian Philosophy: Part II." Birth Control Review, Volume IX, Number 6 (June 1925), page 181.

"Enter into friendly mutually-protective alliances with those nations who are adopting the same course, for defending yourself against high birth rate aggressive nations. Build up international law and federation when it has overcome its population problem ..."

Charles V. Drysdale. "The Neo-Malthusian Philosophy: Part III." Birth Control Review, Volume IX, Number 7 (July 1925), page 202.

"To sum up, we can say that birth control will stop many of the material miseries that handicap women and children and also some of the moral miseries that are so frequent among the masses in my country."

Elena Torres. "Mexico." Birth Control Review, Volume IX, Number 7 (July 1925), pages 208 and 209.

"By a curious but everlasting irony of human nature, the people who call themselves the best people and make the most noise about morals have always opposed personal liberty as the chief danger of existence ...

"We can only regard them with equal horror and marvel that any but savages or despots could uphold the barbarism of keeping women in ignorance and in bondage concerning the most perilous and the most precious right they can possess: the right to choose not only the fathers of their children, but the time and conditions of their birth.

"I prophesy that in a few years these over-righteous tyrants will be accepting birth control as the natural and normal condition of life; and using it as a sacred institution with which to combat the next step of human progress.

"Those who endure the martyrdom of abuse and contempt heaped upon the advocates of birth control can rest assured that they are merely running the gauntlet that every benefactor of the race has had to endure."

"Message from Rupert Hughes." Birth Control Review, Volume IX, Number 7 (July 1925), page 209.

"An English scientist says the average span of life can be extended easily to 150 years at a cost of 12 cents a head, and doubtless there are some cases in which the outlay would be warranted."

Quote from the Detroit News. Birth Control Review, Volume IX, Number 9 (September 1925), page 262.

"Birth Control is a proper procedure, which is, perhaps, able to create a balance between the fit and the unfit. Its practice would go far toward a solution of the crime problem of today."

"News Notes: California." Birth Control Review, Volume IX, Number 9 (September 1925), page 264.

1926

""It is certain," [Baker] says, "that if the population of the United States continues to increase for more than another century as it has during the past century there is no means by which the present standard of living can be maintained, except by the importation of foodstuffs from other lands, which will need their foodstuffs even more than we."

"The fact that we could easily produce more food simply means that we have not yet reached the saturation point in regard to population. But could Italy or England "easily produce" more? Could Japan do it? And could we do it if we had 250,000,000 people instead of a little over one hundred million?

"Indeed, Hardy has shown that if the world's total food production were divided equally among all the inhabitants of the globe, it would not suffice to afford the minimum satisfactory ration."

Malcolm H. Bissell. "Malthus: Right or Wrong?" Birth Control Review, Volume X, Number 1 (January 1926), pages 18 and 19.

"You need never be afraid of the abuse of the privilege of sterilization, because a public opinion intelligent enough to understand its need will be intelligent enough to prevent its abuse."

Dr. C.C. Little. "The Educator's Responsibility." Birth Control Review, Volume X, Number 1 (January 1926), page 20.

"Frank O. Lowden, former governor of Illinois is, according to an Associated Press dispatch, the latest public man to give warning of the danger of starvation from overpopulation in the United States. The time is approaching, he is quoted as saying in an address in Chicago, when no nation can maintain a population beyond its ability to feed it from its own soil ... He asks what preparation we are making to feed the population of 200,000,000 which we may expect to have, at our present birth rate, fifty years hence."

"Periodical Notes." Birth Control Review, Volume X, Number 1 (January 1926), page 28.


"With an increase of fifty per cent in agricultural efficiency and a utilization of all tillable areas America can raise food for only 208 million people."

Frank H. Hankins, Ph.D. "Does America Have Too Many Children?" Birth Control Review, Volume X, Number 2 (February 1926), page 60.


"[Judge E.C. Robinson of Oakland] stated that not only are a large proportion of criminals feeble-minded, but "75 to 80 per cent are hereditary cases." In cash value he estimated that we are at the present time losing from this class over $2,000,000,000 a year, and the defective classes have a greater rate of increase than the normal, by 1 per cent a year. "The future," said he, "is a matter of mathematics. Either the burden of the mentally and physically unfit will break down the capability of the normal population or their numbers will eventually swallow the normal population. In either case the conditions in prospect are appalling ... One in twenty-five of our present population is destined to go insane. Insanity increased from 118 per 100,000 to 220 per 100,000 in 1920.""

"Periodical Notes." Birth Control Review, Volume X, Number 2 (February 1926), page 62.


"The Plaindealer (Cleveland quotes Dr. J. McKeen Cattell as saying in his recent address as retiring president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science: "If only the best children were born the welfare of the world would be advanced beyond reach of practical imagination.""

"Periodical Notes." Birth Control Review, Volume X, Number 2 (February 1926), page 62.


"It is unlikely that England will ever again be able to find work for a population of 48 millions."

Dean Inge in "News Notes." Birth Control Review, Volume X, Number 2 (February 1926), page 67.


"I believe the Church should champion Birth Control because Birth Control will increase the number of marriages, lessen divorce and desertion, enrich and strengthen the marriage bond by making possible normal and complete companionship between husband and wife without the haunting fear of too many children."

Charles Francis Potter. "The Message of the Terrible Meek." Birth Control Review, Volume X, Number 4 (April 1926), page 119.


"When it is considered that at the rate at which we are going now here in the United States, by the end of this century a date that our children will live to see we shall be living under conditions of worse overcrowding than prevail in China today, the wayfaring man though a fool must be able to see that there is no time to lose."

Henry Pratt Fairchild, Ph.D. "Optimum Population." Birth Control Review, Volume X, Number 4 (April 1926), page 121.


"So far as the Protestant Church is concerned and the Hebrew Communion, there is no organized opposition to Birth Control. So far as the Roman Catholic Church is concerned, they are organized against us. The Roman Catholic opposition is the chief opposition with which we have to contend at the present time. I have always ventured to hope that some day the Roman Catholic Church may see fit to modify its position, even as it has modified other positions in the past. There was a time when they were perfectly willing to persecute men who maintained that the world was round. Now they certainly do not persecute people for that belief. Possibly on Birth Control they may so modify their position as to recognize the good work that it is doing."

William H. Garth. "The Present Status of the Church on Birth Control." Birth Control Review, Volume X, Number 9 (September 1926), page 273.


[***] "The question of race betterment is one of immediate concern, and I am glad to say that the United States Government has already taken certain steps to control the quality of our population through the drastic immigration laws. There is a quota restriction by which only so many people from each country are allowed to enter our shores each month. It is the latest method adopted by our government to solve the population problem. Most people are convinced that this policy is right, and agree that we should slow down on the number as well as the kind of immigrants coming here. But while we close our gates to the so-called "undesirables" from other countries, we make no attempt to discourage or cut down the rapid multiplication of the unfit and undesirable at home. In fact through our archaic and inhuman laws against Birth Control information the breeding of defectives and insane becomes a necessity. These types are being multiplied with breakneck rapidity and increasing far out of proportion to the normal and intelligent classes.

"The American public is taxed, heavily taxed, to maintain an increasing race of morons, which threatens the very foundations of our civilization.

"It now remains for the United States government to set a sensible example to the world by offering a bonus or a yearly pension to all obviously unfit parents who allow themselves to be sterilized by harmless and scientific means. In this way the moron and the diseased would have no posterity to inherit their unhappy condition. The number of the feebleminded would decrease and a heavy burden would be lifted from the shoulders of the fit. Such a bonus would be a wise and profitable investment for the nation. It would be the salvation of American civilization. It would enable thousands of parents to get a firm footing on the path of life and enable them to give some care to those children they have already borne."

Margaret Sanger. "The Function of Sterilization." Birth Control Review, Volume X, Number 10 (October 1926), page 299.


"Birth Control is absolutely essential for the very preservation of our present day civilization. Those things which we in America hold most dear, our high standard of living, the good food we have to eat, the clothes we have to wear, the houses in which we live, and the cars in which we ride and the radios which we so much enjoy are all a part of it. As our population continues to increase, more and more of these things will have to be sacrificed ..."

"This astounding increase in population must be stopped if we are to maintain our American standard of living which we all hold so dear ... We cannot have things unless we are able to make them. We cannot consume so much unless we produce that amount. We cannot eat something that is not produced, wear something that is not made. And from now on as our population increases we are going to produce less per capita, per worker, and as we produce less we shall have less to consume."

Dr. Percy Clark. "Birth Control on the Air: Part I." Birth Control Review, Volume X, Number 10 (October 1926), pages 303 and 304.


"But what, then, is the answer to this problem of rapidly increasing populations, so that a nation must expand into the territory of some other expanding nation or slowly die of starvation? If the answer is not war of conquest and extermination what is it? Obviously the limitation of population. We are limiting it now by the restriction of immigration. We refuse to admit defectives, weaklings, paupers, idiots, through that gateway. When we get wise enough we shall refuse to admit undesirables through the gateway of birth. "Quality, not quantity," is the slogan for the parents of the future. This will necessitate other changes in human nature. But unless such changes are brought about it will be the same old hell of bloody and brutal war to the end of the hideous chapter."

The Universalist Leader. "Press Clippings." Birth Control Review, Volume X, Number 10 (October 1926), page 317.


1927

"It is certain that if the population of the United States continues to increase for more than another century as it has during the past century, there is no means by which the present standard of living can be maintained, except by importation of foodstuffs even more than we. And looking forward 200 or 300 years, which is a shorter span of time than that elapsed since the settlements of Jamestown and Plymouth, it seems necessary to recognize not only a stationary population in this country and throughout the world. Whether this stationary state will be one of misery for the majority of the people, as in China and India today, or one of well-being and happiness will depend largely upon voluntary restrictions of population."

O. E. Baker, Economist, U.S. Department of Agriculture. "Birth Control Primer." Birth Control Review, Volume XI, Number 1 (March 1927), page 67.


"Knowledge of Birth Control, I am convinced, would be a help toward chastity, in that it would make young people feel they could marry early, if they could both go on working until they felt they could support a family. If precautionary measures can ever take the place of the too frequent abortions, which are still performed, it will be a blessing to the race."

Dora G.S. Hazard. "Life Saner, Healthier and Happier." In the article "Youth and Morality: Are Our Young Going Astray?" Birth Control Review, Volume XI, Number 1 (March 1927), page 76.


"The most practical method of Birth Control is the use of harmless mechanical and chemical devices for the prevention of conception. These devices, called contraceptives, are simple and effective and are the means of preventing the great and growing evil of abortion."

H.G. Wells. "Birth Control Primer." Birth Control Review, Volume XI, Number 1 (April 1927), page 99.


"Most of those present know that Birth Control is not abortion. The alarming increase in self-induced abortions among married women in this country is a cause of great concern to all medical men. In the final analysis this practice represents a revolt against an unwanted pregnancy. How much better to place in the hands of these distracted women the means of preventing pregnancy so they will not be driven into practice which is repulsive to all the finer feelings of humanity as well as being a severe threat to the health and life of the mother. Birth Control or Contraception, as we speak of it medically, will prevent abortion."

"A Few Medical Facts About Birth Control." Birth Control Review, Volume XI, Number 1 (April 1927), page 124.


"The most civilized countries everywhere and the most civilized people in them are those with the lowest birth rate.

"THE PROGRESS OF CIVILIZATION. It is necessary to abolish such obstacles as war, starvation and disease if the nations are to preserve their present civilization. But civilization begins in the home and is destroyed whenever the family becomes larger than the parents can support in comfort. Overcrowded tenements, which give no chance for decency and morality for the growing children, are uncivilized. Child labor and scanty education, necessary when the father's wages cannot support the family without help from the children, destroy civilization. A life of ill-health and hardship for the mother, with no opportunity for recreation or for larger interests, is not a civilized existence. Crowded schools, double sessions, classes of 50 or 60 children for the harassed teachers do not tend to progress in civilization. Civilization is only possible when mother and child are given the opportunity of happy and adequate living. If we desire that civilization shall progress, we must eliminate bad conditions. The best remedy is through BIRTH CONTROL. The mother can then limit her family to the number for whom she can adequately care, and for whom the community offers good education and fair opportunity in life."

Havelock Ellis. "Birth Control Primer." Birth Control Review, Volume XI, Number 1 (June 1927), page 163.


"The World Population Conference, first of its kind ever to be held, will meet in the Salle Central at Geneva, Switzerland, on August 31, September 1, 2, 1927, under the auspices of leading scientists and scientific organizations of many countries. It will be, in effect, a conclave of the medical, biological, sociological, ethical and statistical authorities of the world, who have gone far in the study of the population problem, but who have never assembled at a common meeting table to exchange their views and coordinate their knowledge. The nations of the world are keenly aware of their individual population problems; they are generally cognizant of the population problems of their near neighbors and all distant countries. It is known that the question of population growth holds possibilities of menace to the future of civilization, and yet the world population problem is one of the few great issues of to-day which have not been subject to concerted international action.

Its Purpose and Possibilities.

"One of the main purposes, therefore, of this Conference is to study the question from an international point of view. Such a conference must be strictly scientific, and accordingly eminent men and women in the fields of biology, economics and sociology will be invited to participate. By this procedure it is hoped that 100 or 150 leaders of scientific thought from various countries will be given an opportunity for mutual interchange of ideas and for the recognition of those aspects of the population question which are of equal interest to all Nations. Among the subjects to be discussed are Population and the Food Supply, the Biology of Population Growth, Optimum Density, the Differential Birth Rate, Migration and Its Control, Fertility and Sterility in relation to Population and the Work of a Race Biological Institute. It is possible that from such a conference will come an international movement which, through its findings, will help in the solution of other financial, economic and health problems which are to-day the cause of grave concern."

"The World Population Conference." Birth Control Review, Volume XI, Number 1 (June 1927), page 183.


"Poverty! This is one of the most pronounced ills of human society, one largely resulting from over-population, and one which might ultimately be entirely abolished by the proper application of Birth Control principles. There are too many children being born into the world whose parents are unable to properly feed and clothe them, unable to properly take care of their health, unable to properly educate and otherwise prepare them for existence in the world. Many parents, of course, know these things themselves, and would gladly refrain from over-populating the world with such undesirables, and over-burdening themselves, if they only knew the proper methods for avoiding it.

"It should be clear that we must either employ Birth Control, and reap its rich rewards, or continue to be faced by poverty, crime, disease, ignorance, imbecility, and other highly undesirable but remediable ills which afflict the human race."

Robert F. Hester. "God and the Birth Rate." Birth Control Review, Volume XI, Number 1 (October 1927), page 275.


"Society must take its choice between contraceptives and abortion. If knowledge of scientific contraception is withheld, there seems to be no alternative but abortion. No woman should be asked to bear a child unwillingly or at a sacrifice of health or happiness. So far as unmarried girls are concerned, opponents of Birth Control argue that to disseminate knowledge of contraception would simply be to put a premium on illicit amours. They argue that girls are restrained from indiscretion through the fear of consequences. That is nonsense. Love cannot be abolished by legislation. Nor can legislation or social rules eliminate those acts which are the consequence of love. They are fundamental. So long as men and women live on this earth, the sexual act will be performed, legitimately or illegitimately. Moral or immoral, right or wrong, natural instincts will find an outlet. And laws, creeds, and customs might just as well reconcile themselves to it. Which is better, to arm every girl with a knowledge of contraceptive methods and trust to her innate decency to keep herself pure, or to withhold that knowledge and hang over her head the threat of ostracism and disgrace that will drive her to dangerous, illegal operations if she slips? We live in a world of imperfections. When we fail to recognize that fact and adjust our customs to it, we simply put a premium on crime."

) Vancouver Daily Sun [British Columbia]. "A Premium on Crime." Birth Control Review, Volume XI, Number 1 (October 1927), page 277.


"Human beings must not breed as if they still were liable to be decimated periodically by hunger, otherwise "starving times" will recur even in this age of steam and steel. Humanity grows as a tree grows: each year the growth ring is bigger. On the other hand, as more and more of the globe's neglected resources are brought into play, the extensibleness of food production should decline, just as, the more you have stretched a rubber band, the harder it is to stretch it still further. Imagine mankind as thronging to a vast spread dinner-table which can be extended fast enough to accommodate the 20 million extra guests which now appear every year. But can the table be extended fast enough to seat the yearly 40 million new guests who will seek places 60 years hence? How about 120 years hence when each year 80 million more guests will want seats? Or 180 years hence when 160 million more will present themselves each year?

"There are good reasons for believing that the real enemy of the dove of peace is not the eagle of pride nor the vulture of greed, but the Stork."

) Edward Alsworth Ross. "Birth Control the Ultimate Salvation of Mankind A Few Facts Gathered from `Standing Room Only,'" Birth Control Review, Volume XI, Number 1 (November 1927), page 283.


"Birth Control is universally practiced. And because we have not placed this control under a system of education and investigation, its practice is dangerous. The right to produce the men and women of the future should be a privilege based on health, on the ability to care for children properly and on an honest liking for children ... People get the notion birth control means no children or, at the most, one or two children. Properly applied, it means nothing of the sort. It goes in for regulation to the extent that children are not born into disease, poverty or unhappiness. It advocates, whenever possible, not less than four children in a family. There



are not enough if that family is to contribute its type and its talents to the future. Death, failure to marry or childless marriages bring about the end in one, two or at most, three generations."

) Ellsworth Huntington. "As Ellsworth Huntington Sees It." Birth Control Review, Volume XI, Number 1 (November 1927), page 293.


"What Have We Learned About Birth Control?

"We have learned that Birth Control is the substitution of reason and choice for blind chance in the bringing of children into the world.

"We have learned that there are harmless and sanitary methods of preventing conception, which leave untouched the love of married people.

"We have learned that through ignorance and superstition the use of these methods is opposed. Owing to this opposition it is very difficult to secure the repeal or amendment of old laws which hinder the introduction of Birth Control and the spread of teaching concerning it.

"We have learned that Birth Control is necessary for the following reasons:



I. THE HEALTH OF MOTHER AND CHILD.

II. THE HAPPINESS OF MARRIED LIFE.

III. THE RELIEF OF OVER-POPULATION.

IV. THE IMPROVEMENT OF THE RACE.

V. THE PREVENTION OF POVERTY.

VI. THE PROGRESS OF CIVILIZATION.

VII. THE PREVENTION OF WAR.



"We now give:



"Reason VIII. The Preservation of a High Standard of Living.

"Population is at its optimum, (or best number when all the inhabitants of the country can enjoy both the necessities and amenities of life; when smaller numbers would mean less comfort and happiness, and a larger population would equally reduce welfare.

"A nation that multiplies beyond the optimum must lower its standard of living.

"Life becomes sordid, cramped and robbed of beauty and freedom.

"People must work harder for smaller wages.

"They must eat cheaper food, having regard to what will grow most abundantly on small areas of land potatoes instead of wheat-bread and meat.

"Forest and open land must give way to corn and potato patches, and the beauty of scenery must yield to utility for every available bit of land.

"Wild animals and birds must disappear. The over-crowded nation cannot afford to use land as game preserves or refuges for wild birds and animals.

"The nation that is multiplying beyond its means of subsistence must follow the example set by Italy under Mussolini. It must cut out holidays; it must work harder and longer; it must be content with merely making a living. It will have no time really to live and to enjoy life and nature.

"Is it worth while, merely for the sake of big numbers to take the joy out of life? Do you care to live, or are you content just to exist?"



"In the absence of an improbable revolutionary improvement in agriculture, we shall be pointedly confronted with the choice of reducing either our birth rate or our standard of living.

"Even if it could be demonstrated that this country could support 500,000,000 by eliminating waste and giving up meat, the standard of living would continue to fall and the problem of numbers continually get worse. A.B. Wolfe Ohio State University."

) "Birth Control Primer." Birth Control Review, Volume XI, Number 1 (December 1927), page 315.




1928



"There is only one solution: The scientific control of the birth-rate. We should take the shackles off the physicians and tell the nations there is no hope for the solution of the population problem except in the scientific control of the birth-rate. You cannot trust God to bring everything off all right if you let the earth's population double every sixty years. If we sow that, we will reap starvation, unemployment, physical and moral decay."

) "News Notes." Birth Control Review, Volume XII, Number 1 (January 1928), page 25.


"With the world capable of supporting only five billion of people, which at the present rate of increase will be reached in 100 years' time, steps must be taken immediately to solve the population question."

) Professor East, Harvard University. "Standing Room Only." Birth Control Review, Volume XII, Number 2 (February 1928), page 59.


"It is an injustice to both parents and child to bring an unwelcome baby into the world. Most people find life hard enough at best, without being an unwelcome child in any home, and more so in a poverty-stricken one. Some have feared that if Birth Control knowledge were given to the world, there would be no more babies, and unbridled lust become rampant. Is fear the chief ingredient of virtue and morality? If so, we may as well expunge the two words from our dictionaries, and write FEAR in large letters. People want homes and babies, but want them under proper conditions the best conditions that our civilization makes possible, and restriction of propagation of the unfit is the first step in making a place for those of better birth."

) Ella K. Dearborn. "Birth Control." Birth Control Review, Volume XII, Number 3 (March 1928), page 88.


"It has become clear that the population of the earth is fast arriving at its possible maximum; that its density is badly distributed; that redistribution of space can only be rectified by displacements; and that Birth Control in overpopulated countries is the first and surest method whereby the balance may be peacefully restored."

) "Mrs. Sanger on Population." Birth Control Review, Volume XII, Number 4 (April 1928), page 109.




[***] "If man continues to act in the reckless way which has characterized his behaviour hitherto, he wil multiply to such an enormous extent that only a few kinds of animals and plants which serve him as food and fuel will be left on the face of the globe. He will have converted the gracious earth, once teeming with innumerable, incomparably beautiful varieties of life, into a desert, or, at best, a vast agricultural domain abandoned to the production of food-stuffs for the hungry millions, which, like maggots consuming a carcass, or the irrepressible swarms of the locust, incessantly devour and multiply."

) Sir Edwin Ray Lankester Birth Control Review, Volume XII, Number 4 (April 1928), page 111.


"If population continues at the present rate, the habitable area of the earth will be covered in 300 years and the temperate zone in 150."

) Geheimrath Rubner (Berlin). Quote in Birth Control Review, Volume XII, Number 4 (April 1928), page 111.


"The total population of the globe is now about 1,957,000,000. It cannot long continue to increase at its present rate, owing to lack of sufficient food."

) Charles Close, before the British Geographical Society. "The Limit of Increase." Birth Control Review, Volume XII, Number 4 (April 1928), page 130.


"It stands to reason that `God so loves the world' that He will not allow it to be reduced to a human breeding pen with a hog-and-hominy annex to supply food. The alternative to war is Birth-Control. Take your choice."

) Editorial in the Jefferson County Union (Ft. Atkinson, Wisconsin). "Take Your Choice." Birth Control Review, Volume XII, Number 5 (May 1928), page 162.


"In a country, even thinly inhabited, if an increase of population takes place before more food is raised and more houses built, the inhabitants must be distressed for food and sustenance."

) Thomas R. Malthus. "Ten Good Reasons for Birth Control The Relief of Over-Population." Birth Control Review, Volume XII, Number 6 (June 1928), page 167.


"The earth can support only a certain number of humans, just as of oysters, or codfish, or rabbits, or sparrows. When that limit is reached some form of control will come into operation. It may be the control of a diminished birthrate or of an increased death-rate. In fact population has never been uncontrolled. Population control is a necessity. It lies with man himself to decide whether control shall be by rational processes, adapted to promote human welfare and happiness, or by the ruthless and cruel processes which nature inevitably imposes, when other means fail."

) Henry Pratt Fairchild. "Ten Good Reasons for Birth Control The Relief of Over-Population." Birth Control Review, Volume XII, Number 6 (June 1928), page 167.




"In two hundred years (at its present rate of expansion there would be ten times the present population of the globe, and then, even if mankind were fed by a fall of heavenly manna, they would be so crowded and would poison one another so terribly, that life would hardly be worth living."

) Edward Alsworth Ross. "Ten Good Reasons for Birth Control The Relief of Over-Population." Birth Control Review, Volume XII, Number 6 (June 1928), page 167.


"As in our more limited communities and cities, where self-sustaining and self-reliant sections of the population are forced to shoulder the burden of the reckless and irresponsible, so in the great world community, the more prosperous, and incidentally less populous nations, are asked to relieve and succor those countries which are either the victims of the wide-spread havoc of war, or militaristic statemanship, or the age-long tradition of reckless propagation and its consequent over-population."

) Margaret Sanger. "Ten Good Reasons for Birth Control The Relief of Over-Population." Birth Control Review, Volume XII, Number 6 (June 1928), page 167.


"When Birth Control knowledge is generally accessible, there will be a steady reduction in pauperism and disease, no need for charity, and a general betterment of the race. That Birth control is the great instrument of racial betterment is coming to be generally recognized. Havelock Ellis says of it: "All those today who are deeply concerned in the great problem of Eugenic progress assume, as a matter of course, that the only practical instrument by which Eugenics can work is Birth Control.'"

) Eleanor Dwight Jones. "Practical Race Betterment." Birth Control Review, Volume XII, Number 7 (July 1928), pages 203 and 204.


"What is Overpopulation? In the first place, what is over-population, anyhow? Nobody seems to know. Of course, it's easy to define `Over-population is a condition which exists when more people are living in a given area than can be maintained in a comfortable condition by their own activities within that area.' This is probably as bad as any other definition. It doesn't really mean anything, and I have never seen any definition of over-population that did. What is the standard of `comfortable condition'? Just how can we determine whether the failure of a portion or all of the population of the areas to attain this minimum standard of comfort is due to excess of numbers, to defective social organization, or to some other factor? A large proportion of the world's population has to go to bed hungry every night, while another portion is throwing food away. Millions die in Asiatic famines, while Iowa farmers burn corn for fuel, and the fact that there are one hundred thousand under-nourished school children in New York City does not prevent New Jersey truck-growers from dumping carloads of cabbages into the Delaware River. Hardy calculates that the world's total food production is insufficient to provide the minimum satisfactory ratio per capita, but does anyone believe that we couldn't raise enough to feed everybody well and to spare? Obviously there is nothing definite about over-population as long as we think merely in terms of the possibilities of producing enough to eat. No one can say how great a population the earth could support if we used all its resources and our own brains most efficiently. Yet the fact remains that there is such a thing as over-population, and that many regions suffer severely from it. Most of us believe that England



is over-populated, and we are sure that parts of India and China are. Mussolini says Italy is over-populated, and he wants room for surplus Italians; but other countries are not at all eager to furnish the room to take the Italians. Mussolini is quite ready to fight about it, providing he can pick on some little country he can lick. What then is the answer? We hear it said that over-population is a cause of war, and that nations will fight when they begin to get hungry. But it's hard to find a war in modern times that started because people were hungry. The working people are the ones that feel the pinch of hunger, but no one accuses the German working people, or the Russian peasants, or the poverty-stricken inhabitants of the slums of London, Paris or Naples of starting the World War. Well-fed diplomats and millionaire captains of industry had a lot more to do with it. The starving millions in `over-populated' India and China have not attacked prosperous and peaceful Europe. The shoe is on the other foot. Ground down by generations of misery, the under-nourished hordes of the East, resigned to a hopeless fatalism, have been easily conquered and exploited by dreadnaughts and bayonets from the better-fed parts of the world."

) Malcolm H. Bissell, Ph.D. "Civilization and Population." Birth Control Review, Volume XII, Number 8 (August 1928), page 229.


"Infanticide, once common, is now universally recognized as a crime, and is much less common than abortion. Yet `abortion is in some respects even more objectionable than infanticide.' It destroys the unborn babe and at the same time threatens the life and health of the mother."

) "The Indispensability of Birth Control." Birth Control Review, Volume XII, Number 9 (September 1928), page 255.


"Migration and War are the World Aspects of Over-population. If a race grows in numbers beyond its national boundaries it is driven to encroach on weaker nations, or aggressively to seek new markets. Thus a population explosiON through over-crowding at home becomes itself the first bomb thrown in a war between nations."

) "Ten Good Reasons for Birth Control The Solution of the Problems of Migration and War." Birth Control Review, Volume XII, Number 10 (October 1928), page 271.


"We might as well face the bitter fact that the earth can only hold a certain number of people and when we exceed that number we have War. Therefore population must be controlled."

) General John F. O'Ryan, "Ten Good Reasons for Birth Control The Solution of the Problems of Migration and War." Birth Control Review, Volume XII, Number 10 (October 1928), page 271.


"Because War is no panacea for population troubles, it does not follow that the converse of the population holds. Most assuredly over-population may become a very grave cause of war. Napoleon is alleged to have said that with the high birthrate of France, she must make war. But when the star of Napoleon waned, France chose to reduce her birthrate. Within a century there resulted a nation whose population was almost stationary, and whose people, well situated economically, had no desire for war. Her eastern neighbor, on the other hand, made no such



efforts to live peaceably within her own boundaries. The Kaiser was thus able to justify the attack on France with the old plea of necessity."

) E. M. East. "Ten Good Reasons for Birth Control The Solution of the Problems of Migration and War." Birth Control Review, Volume XII, Number 10 (October 1928), page 271.


"History supports the fact that war, famine and pestilence have always operated to settle population problems. There is, however, a theorectical possibility of putting off the operation of these forces ... The nations of the world must uniformly undertake to solve their own population problems by the application of rational measures of control rather than by aggression upon the rights of other people."

) Henry Pratt Fairchild. "Ten Good Reasons for Birth Control The Solution of the Problems of Migration and War." Birth Control Review, Volume XII, Number 10 (October 1928), page 271.


"In our judgment over-population is the most serious of all the causes of war because when it has been allowed to develop, no appeal to reason will be able to remove it. In the case of other differences between nations, compromise is often possible, and often the mere postponement of a crisis will suffice to prevent a conflict. But where a nation has not room in its own territory for its own people it must seek an outlet in other countries. On this broad issue no compromise is possible, and postponement only makes the appeal to force the more imperative. Today the population of many countries is growing so rapidly that unless the growth is checked a far-reaching struggle for the possession of the portions of the earth still partially vacant cannot long be postponed. Already the government of the United States has taken steps to close its territories to unrestricted immigration ... This action, which the American people have taken to defend their own interests, conflicts with the obvious interests of at least two other important nations, Italy and Japan. Unable to settle in the United States, the constantly over-flowing populations of Italy and Japan are forced to seek new outlets. These two cases are sufficient illustrations for the moment. They are threats to peace that no arguments can touch. The only way to prevent future wars for the acquisition of territory is to persuade the nations of the world to control the growth of their respective populations."

) Statement signed by C. C. Little as President and Margaret Sanger as Secretary of the International Federation of Neo-Malthusian and Birth Control Leagues. "Ten Good Reasons for Birth Control The Solution of the Problems of Migration and War." Birth Control Review, Volume XII, Number 10 (October 1928), page 271.


"The fact, recorded in our news columns, that Margaret Sanger has resigned the presidency of the American Birth Control League does not mean that she is giving up her work for Birth Control. It means that she is dedicating her time and strength to a phase of the movement that seems immediate and imperative to her. We give in her own words her explanation of her action: `As I have long wished to do, I will devote myself to a scientific study of the causes and cures of the terrific sacrifice of the lives of child-bearing women. I feel confident that a serious study will lead to a scientific demonstration of the fact that maternal mortality can be reduced by the application of Birth Control knowledge. Infant mortality in the United States has



been appreciably lowered in the last ten years, but nothing of consequence has been accomplished in lowering the death-rate of mothers. I feel that active and constructive measures are necessary. It is a matter that must be approached with courage as well as knowledge. I am preparing to spend a period of three years in sociological investigation and in gathering facts pertinent to the situation. In this work, I shall have the aid and co-operation of some of the foremost authorities in the world. The need of such a study is well recognized by them. The problem is economic and sociological as well as biological and pathological."

) "Editorial." Birth Control Review, Volume XII, Number 10 (October 1928), page 273.




1929



"Morality is promoted by Birth Control in two ways. In the broader and more general meaning of the word, home life, freed both from inhibitions and from worry about health and economic pressure, will tend to produce more normal families and thus raise the ethical standards of the race. In the more special aspect of the word, as sexual morality, Birth Control will attack the institution of prostitution and increase the stability of the family."

) "More Reasons for Birth Control The Promotion of Morality." Birth Control Review, Volume XIII, Number 1 (February 1929), page 35.


"Birth Control will prevent prostitution, because young people will be able to marry early and wait until their incomes are sufficient before having children, and wives will be freed from the haunting fear of pregnancy which hovers over a woman from month to month and frequently drives husbands to prostitutes."

) Margaret Sanger. "More Reasons for Birth Control The Promotion of Morality." Birth Control Review, Volume XIII, Number 1 (February 1929), page 35.


"The triumphs of Science over the powers of Nature can never become the means of improving and elevating the universal lot until, in addition to just institutions, the increase of mankind shall come under the deliberate guidance of judicious foresight."

) John Stuart Mill, quoted in the Birth Control Review, Volume XIII, Number 1 (March 1929), page 92.


"But whether we want it or not we are gradually being forced to admit that there is a problem and one that sooner or later must be solved. The newspapers and census reports tell us directly and indirectly that divorce is a growing phenomenon; that juvenile delinquency jumps by leaps and bounds; that crime is increasing; that venereal disease is everywhere prevalent; that known abortions number hundreds of thousands each year; that infant mortality is a blot on modern civilization and that thousands of women die needlessly in child-birth. The old codes once fairly satisfactory do not function adequately today ... Margaret Sanger is met with a boo and a smirk because she is devoting her life to bringing about factors which will produce more intimate and faithful relations between husband and wife; because she believes that motherhood and fatherhood should be a chosen role; because she wishes to see generations of children who are wanted and who may be brought into the world not doomed beforehand with disease;



because she wishes to decrease the individual grief and social loss brought about each year by the thousands of mothers who die in childbirth. No one may drive a machine without exhibiting evidence that he can run it. He must obtain a license. To preach or to teach or to practice medicine or law, the individual must demonstrate a modicum of evidence before he is allowed to take up the profession. But anyone may enter the most vital relationship in life, running great individual and social costs and risks even to unborn generations, merely for the asking. Before a license to marry is given, why should not applicants be obliged to show that they have received a suitable minimum of knowledge preparing them for married life and parenthood, as well as evidence of physical and mental health? Everyone who knows engaged people knows that they are not willing but eager to do anything to make this new venture a success. They seek information and knowledge; and where do they find it? Sometimes from the disappointed and disillusioned. Too often from quacks and from the gutter. The state, given social sanction, through its trained physicians and psychiatrists, could perform this function. How much better before marriage than in divorce courts for juvenile delinquency!"

) E. P. Kimball in "Training for Parenthood: Our Neighbors Say." Birth Control Review, Volume XIII, Number 1 (July 1929), pages 204-205.


[***] "The American Birth Control League, from its inception, has put itself on record as steadfastly opposed to abortion."

"Anyone who knows about Birth Control knows that it would do away with abortions, which occur in appalling numbers in America every year."

) Margaret Sanger in "The Curse of Abortion." Birth Control Review, Volume XIII, Number 1 (November 1929), page 307.


"Not only has Birth Control nothing in common with Abortion but it is a weapon of the greatest value in fighting this evil. With its help we may hope to limit and, I trust, eradicate this criminal practice. It is not generally known outside the medical profession and social workers, how widespread this practice is. It amounts in fact to a national disgrace. I say national because the United States leads all other countries in the number of abortions performed yearly."

) Rachelle Yarros, M.D. "The Curse of Abortion." Birth Control Review, Volume XIII, Number 1 (November 1929), page 307.


"The knowledge of how crudely to produce abortion is as old as any knowledge in civilization. The trade is passed down from mouth to mouth, and, with demands there are for it, cannot be extinguished. It is one of the tragedies of civilization which is most completely concealed. Practical methods of Birth Control offer the only relief from this tragedy."

) William Allen Pusey, M.D. "The Curse of Abortion." Birth Control Review, Volume XIII, Number 1 (November 1929), page 307.


"There is one measure and only one which will positively do away with the evil of abortion, and that is teaching people how to avoid conception."

) William J. Robinson, M.D. "The Curse of Abortion." Birth Control Review, Volume XIII, Number 1 (November 1929), page 307.




"The knowledge of contraceptive measures would be the saving of the lives of thousands of poor mothers who in their desperate efforts to get rid of an unborn and unwanted child resort to violent and dangerous means."

) S. Adolphus Knopf, M.D. "The Curse of Abortion." Birth Control Review, Volume XIII, Number 1 (November 1929), page 307.


"Thoughtful people who have studied the subject have pointed out over and over again that information with regard to Birth Control, dispensed by competent and high-minded physicians, would be the most powerful means of decreasing the number of abortions."

) Alice Hamilton, M.D. "The Curse of Abortion." Birth Control Review, Volume XIII, Number 1 (November 1929), page 307.


"Birth Control is in action now. It seems to me to be a quiet, communal response to the crowded conditions of to-day."

) Warwick Deeping, Birth Control Review, Volume XIII, Number 1 (November 1929), page 326.


"When Birth Control is not universal, it acts to decrease intelligence and character and increase incompetence and poverty. For nothing could possibly improve the conditions of the poor like decreasing their numbers through a spread of Birth Control.

"... Birth Control is the greatest moral agent the world has ever known, that if we really wish to be good citizens in the highest sense we must consider it as our greatest moral privilege, our most religious duty and our loftiest patriotic obligation to place this great evolutionary force at the service of all humanity. It means that better men and women shall be born into the world; that vice, disease and all that goes with social and biological incompetence will gradually decline and ultimately vanish. Can you conceive of a higher call to men's religious passion and idealisms than this that we shall substitute a natural birth selection for the old bloody, brute nature death selection which has so far been the unhappy lot of all organic beings and most of all of man? Is there any nobler ideal that can inspire men and women than to set going those agencies by which human beings shall be born with greater capacities for health and happiness than is possible to us? This is what eugenics really means, the birth by natural processes and by the determination of man's highest emotions, of better, stronger, happier creatures than those who now people the world. Birth Control, when it becomes universal will make parenthood utterly voluntary; it will thus be the chiefest single instrument of eugenics, and will insure, as we look into the `long realities' of the future, that the good, the virtuous and the intelligent will outbreed the bad, the foolish and incompetent, and that they and they alone shall eventually inherit the earth."

) Albert E. Wiggam. "Will the Good or the Bad Inherit the Earth?" Birth Control Review, Volume XIII, Number 1 (December 1929), pages 347 to 349.


"There are two alternatives before us. Either we want to see an increased population, with its attendant evils congestion, deficiency of housing accommodation, unemployment (already so conspicuous in the mining areas, and to a greater or less extent throughout the land), the encroachment of the town upon the country, the desecration of scenery, and the destruction of



much that is of interest in our wild animal and plant life or we want a stationary or diminished population, with no more of these evils. It is high time that we face up to this question and decide what we do want."

) Dr. F.H.A. Marshall, quoted in the Birth Control Review, Volume XIII, Number 1 (December 1929), page 355.




1930



"There are many who fear that if contraceptive information is made available to the married it will find its way into the hands of others who will use the information for the promiscuous satisfying of their own lusts. Thus the inevitable result, it is claimed, would be a lowering of the moral standard of the whole nation, ultimately race suicide, because very few people would be willing to assume family responsibilities and vice would be encouraged. It would indeed be a calamity if such were to be the case. But it does not work out that way ..."

) Harry V.B. Darlington, quoted in "The Conference Mass Meeting." Birth Control Review, Volume XIV, Number 1 (January 1930), pages 7 and 8.


"Like other one-time radical causes, the teaching of Birth Control has become entirely respectable. It has taken its place in the community life. It will soon be one of the recognized normal processes of social functioning in maternity and public health work, and a part of every well regulated program for social reform."

) Clara Taylor Warne. "Making Birth Control Respectable." Birth Control Review, Volume XIV, Number 4 (April 1930), page 111.


"The idea that the mere removal of the dread of conception is going to let loose a flood of iniquity is, I suspect, a misapprehension of the facts. Children of this new generation who have been trained in a code of honor involving the existence and the right use of Birth Control will be less likely even than their mid-Victorian parents to treat the matter lightly or to be beguiled by fools."

) Statement of Reverend Harry Emerson Fosdick, Minister of the Riverside Church, New York City. Birth Control Review, Volume XIV, Number 5 (May 1930), page 132.


"But, deepest of all, I believe in Birth Control as a great spiritual influence ... Birth Control is man's final gesture of emancipation. I believe in it fundamentally because I am a teacher of religion and would serve man's highest spiritual interests."

) Statement of Reverend John Haynes Holmes, Minister of the Community Church, New York City, Birth Control Review, Volume XIV, Number 5 (May 1930), page 133.


"Be honest, know the truth and be free. Speak out, let no sensitive pride hold you back. Let no self-appointed ecclesiastic deter you. Every good thing is for you to enjoy. Soon, let us hope, the required information will be legally given to all who ask for it. Birth Control has



within it possibilities for happiness, more abundant life and untold blessings for this old world. This is good religion."

) Statement of Reverend E.G. Gallagher, Minister of the First Congregational Church, Waseca, Minnesota. Birth Control Review, Volume XIV, Number 5 (May 1930), page 139.


"Nor will the decision [to favor birth control] be confined to Protestantism where it is already unofficially registered in the practice of the people. Roman Catholicism is bound to follow suit. This will not be Rome's first change of front ... When the inevitable hour arrives in this case, the hierarchy will find a way to reverse its former position. Already there are priests of social mind who confess privately that this will be only a matter of time ... Scarcely two generations ago the church, both Roman and Protestant, was scandalized by this instrument of mercy. Ere long there will be a similar change of opinion upon the vexed question of Birth Control. "

) Reverend J.A. MacCallum, Minister of the Walnut Street Presbyterian Church, Philadelphia. "The Church of the Future." Birth Control Review, Volume XIV, Number 5 (May 1930), pages 141 and 142.


"Intelligent Birth Control is not an end in itself. Social justice of any sort is not an end in itself. It is a means, through which human life will be made richer and happier and more capable of achieving a sense of truly spiritual values. Thus Birth Control becomes for the modern religionist not only a permissible course of conduct, but a divine mandate."

) Rabbi Edward L. Israel, Chairman of the Social Justice Commission of the Central Conference of America Rabbis. "A Divine Mandate." Birth Control Review, Volume XIV, Number 5 (May 1930), page 144.


"Under pressure of the public opinion and moral sense of the Church's children, and also under pressure of reason, the [Roman Catholic] Church will change her position in regard to Birth Control."

) E. Boyd Barrett. "The Perversion of a Natural Faculty." Birth Control Review, Volume XIV, Number 5 (May 1930), page 151.


"The practice of contraception will play a major part in improving the quality of our living, and while the number of children per family will be less when contraception has spread to the so-called lower classes, the greater reduction will be in the less fortunate classes of the population, as is now the case of Stockholm.

"While there may not be a rapid increase of people to buy goods in the future, those who are here will have more money to spend, and for a greater variety of goods. When all of the different factors are carefully considered, the changes that are now taking place in the composition of the population would seem to be of advantage both biologically and economically to future civilization."

) Guy Irving Burch, Executive Secretary, Population Reference Bureau. "Population Section." Birth Control Review, Volume XIV, Number 5 (May 1930), page 152.




"Just as America has become economically-minded during the last century, so I predict it will become eugenically-minded during the next. All the signs of the times, if I read them right, point in that direction ... If one or both parents are insane, have been insane, or have marked mental arrestment, one of the parties (preferably the male should be urged to submit to voluntary sterilization ...

"Social workers should urge the sterilization of aments [feebleminded people] and dements upon discharge from institutions for their care. This should be done on the ground that such patients are less well able (ordinarily to care for their children than normals. Personally, I believe such a policy justifiable upon eugenic grounds alone; but there are some scientists whose opinions are worthy of respect, who do not share this view; nevertheless they approve the policy on environmental grounds. Sterilization is as necessary as segregation. Why walk on one foot?

"Permanent measures [sterilization] are only desirable when (a the cessation of reproduction is indicated and when (b contraceptive measures are likely to be unreliable owing to low intelligence."

) Norman E. Himes. "The Social Worker's Part." Birth Control Review, Volume XIV, Number 6 (June 1930), pages 166 and 167.


"The problem comes then to some means of the artificial prevention of superfluous offspring ... There is but one sensible answer scientific Birth Control. Science must save the day; science must solve the problems that past science has created. Science can lead where blindly operating instinct can bring only ruin and despair.

"Scientific Birth Control then, must be made a reality. The forces of scientific progress, scientific research skill, scientific resourcefulness can do their work if the other elements of our social order give their consent and their cooperative aid. The religious, governmental, educational, and related institutions, must forsake their unreasoned taboos, their superstitions, and their grossly misleading fallacies, and awaken to this genuine human need."

) Ralph Barnhart. "Prize-Winning Essay." Birth Control Review, Volume XIV, Number 6 (June 1930), page 173.


"The changes now going on in the factors which will determine our future growth seem to us to indicate that our population in 2000 A.D. will not exceed 185,000,000, and it is quite likely that it will be considerably less."

) Warren S. Thompson and P.K. Whelpton. "A Nation of Elders in the Making." Birth Control Review, Volume XIV, Number 6 (June 1930), page 178.


"The first mode of preventive procedure that merits mention is sterilization. Today twenty-four states have eugenic statutes. Sterilization of the mentally diseased or the criminal protects society as well as the individual ... That legislation has operated on a eugenic platform does not disguise the fact that a violent contraceptive method has met with social approval ..."

"The interest in eugenics, the desire to limit the number of the unfit, the search for methods of diminishing the burden of poverty must naturally come to a common focus in contraception as a reasonable means of limiting the supply of these undesirable elements in social organization ...



"In all likelihood, although this cannot be proven at the present moment, contraception would bring about a marked decrease of mental defectives, both those of congenital and acquired types."

) Ira S. Wile, M.D. "Birth Control as Social Service." Birth Control Review, Volume XIV, Number 7 (July 1930), pages 200 and 201.


"Contraception among all classes of the community would undoubtedly lead to a decrease in delinquency and crime ... A further social benefit from contraception would be a decrease of children born out of wedlock. Promiscuous sex life would probably diminish and marriage would be consummated at an earlier age. There will be an increase in the marriage rate for purposes of mutual support ..."

) Ira S. Wile, M.D. "Birth Control as Social Service." Birth Control Review, Volume XIV, Number 7 (July 1930), page 201.


"Raymond Pearl states that the United States will have reached a maximum population about the year 2100 with about 197 millions of persons. This saturation point is approximated after a careful survey of possible increases in the means of subsistence, and may be taken as the most probable estimate of future population trends that we have ... Contraception is more than a palliative. Besides offering immediate relief in hundreds of individual cases, it will tend to outlaw the possibilities of famines, wars, and diseases over a sweep of years, these being the positive checks to population which Malthus mentioned long ago as the result of failure to adopt preventative checks."

) Robert N. Ford. "Birth Control: A Remedy or a Palliative." Birth Control Review, Volume XIV, Number 7 (July 1930), pages 206 and 207.


"Those who oppose contraception from the moral aspect have a decidedly weak case, if we are to accept the evidence of countries which have adopted Birth Control. Sexual laxity has not been found the case where contraception has been legalized. If one's religion does not coincide with or include this highly moral code of Birth Control, then perhaps we should re-interpret the Bible, the Talmud, the Koran and other holy writ to include it. A critical review of religious evolution shows that man has been quite proficient in adopting religions to his needs, and certainly Birth Control is becoming a pressing need."

) Robert N. Ford. "Birth Control: A Remedy or a Palliative." Birth Control Review, Volume XIV, Number 7 (July 1930), page 206.


"The only danger then from the falling birth-rate which we are witnessing on a world-wide scale is that the rate will not fall as rapidly as it should among the less fit. There is no calamity so destructive nor so irrevocable as the deterioration of our racial stock. Any other evil we can overcome, this one we can only endure. For this reason the dissemination of Birth Control information is the most worth while enterprise in which public spirited citizens can engage. Their efforts will leave behind them as an eternal monument, a finer, stronger and more intelligent citizenry."

) Glenn E. Hoover. "Knowledge of Birth Control Must Be Spread." Birth Control Review, Volume XIV, Number 8 (August 1930), page 235.




"The objections to Birth Control have been many and varied ... From the moral and ethical point of view, it is held that if Birth Control information were made common, sexual relationships might become casual and free and not involve the responsibilities of marriage and child rearing ..."

) Virginia Wuerthele. "A College Woman Looks at Birth Control." Birth Control Review, Volume XIV, Number 9 (September 1930), page 254.


"A more general practice of Birth Control by poorer classes would aid in reducing the number of dependent children, now increasing yearly. The church has a very definite duty also in working for the sterilization of the feeble-minded.

"The average intelligence of the people of our Nation is being lowered due to the fact that the upper classes are not reproducing themselves and the lower classes continue to have large families."

) Reverend John B. Ascham, addressing the Episcopal Divinity School in Cincinnati. Quoted in "News Notes." Birth Control Review, Volume XIV, Number 9 (September 1930), page 265.


"We see therefore that, among Catholic as well as among non-Catholic populations, the adoption of preventive methods of conception follows progress and civilization, and that the general practice of such methods by Catholics (with the tacit consent of the church is merely a matter of time."

) Havelock Ellis, Psychology of Sex, Volume VI, quoted in "Havelock Ellis Predicts a Shift in the Catholic Position." Birth Control Review, Volume XIV, Number 10 (October 1930), page 283.


"Furthermore, it is his [William J. Robinson's] conviction that the profession of prostitution should be declared perfectly legal and legitimate, which would tend to eliminate the evils that are now incidental to its practice ... Cease hounding, persecuting and humiliating her ... and she will at once begin to resist the terrible exploitation to which she is subjected on all sides."

) William J. Fielding. "Prostitution Past, Present and Future." Birth Control Review, Volume XIV, Number 10 (October 1930), page 285.


"The great ideal is still a happy love, leading into marriage and parenthood. But it is precisely that they may gain that ideal that so many of them [college women] are deciding that marriage must not be confounded either with love or with sex. They would remove the confusion of sex as far as possible from parenthood. For a good lover may not be a good husband, and a good husband may not make a good father. The trouble with the present system is that it has attempted to imprison love in sex and in marriage.

"I do not think that youth is tending toward immorality, nor that is [sic] can do so while its ideals are set so high. Out of the temporary confusion due to changing customs, there must emerge a higher morality. Youth would set free what has been long a captive. May the marriages of tomorrow find a new freedom!"

) "An Unofficial Questionnaire: Seventy College Girls Express Their Opinions." Birth Control Review, Volume XIV, Number 10 (October 1930), page 287.




"Attention is also given to the subject of abortion. Reports are submitted of its increasing prevalence and of its dangers, and the means of combating this growing and preventable evil are considered. "The spread of contraceptive knowledge," reads another resolution, "is the best means of reducing the present high incidence of abortions.""

) Hannah M. Stone, M.D. "The 7th International [Birth Control] Conference." Birth Control Review, Volume XIV, Number 11 (November 1930), page 318.


"It is the duty of each nation so to regulate its birth-rate that its inhabitants can live in comfort within the area which has been allotted to it. Any nation which violates this principle and thus directly or indirectly causes a breach of international peace, shall thereby be deemed guilty, and the League [of Nations] will use its influence against it in any war and seek to impose penalties against it in any after settlement ...

"When all nations follow the same course, and especially eliminate their undesirable types by fostering Birth Control, restrictions of all kinds will relax and gradually disappear, international intercourse shall be welcomed, we shall be citizens of the world as well as of our respective nations, international war will be unnecessary and unthinkable, and we shall all be able to combine as one human family and empire to subdue the destructive forces of Nature."

) C.V. Drysdale. "Peace and Population Growth." Birth Control Review, Volume XIV, Number 11 (November 1930), pages 320 and 321.


[***] "Or, again, many of you will remember reading Mr. J.B.S. Haldane's brilliant little book Daedalus, in which he envisaged the future of the human race many centuries hence when eugenics would really be eugenics and all breeding of new human beings would be done entirely in incubators. That may seem fantastic, but in these [birth control] researches we have at any rate the first step towards its possible realization. I mention these things because it seems to me a good example of how pure science is always opening unexpected doors.

"... But not merely as alleviating immediate distress but as part of the long-range control by which man, if he wishes so to do, can become the active trustee for the cosmic process of evolution that is the way I see the Birth Control problem. For really you cannot consider Birth Control merely from one aspect. You have to consider it as a social as well as a personal problem, as a race problem as well as a social problem.

) Julian Huxley. "Towards a Higher Civilization." Birth Control Review, Volume XIV, Number 12 (December 1930), pages 342 to 345.


"For the future the author envisages the further expansion of the activities of the state as super-parent. He seems quite correct in holding that the home conditions now provided by the parents of probably a majority of children are not conducive to the health, morality and intellectual development of the latter to anything like the degree made possible by modern knowledge. We are sacrificing thousands of children to the ignorance and stupidity of parents under the mad illusion that we thus preserve the dignity of parenthood and the sanctity of the home ... Child training and rearing have become complex sciences and arts, so that we have our choice between attempting to give all parents the knowledge, intelligence, temperament and technique for their practice or of developing a smaller group of trained experts under state supervision. Here again the author is in line with present tendencies and the dictates of



dispassionate judgment. He, therefore, visualizes a time in the rather distant future when the state will provide nurseries, kindergartens and schools on a more ambitious plan, nurses and physicians and grants for food and clothing. At the same time eugenic considerations will control marriage, while motherhood, through the beneficent ministrations of Birth Control, will become voluntary and relatively infrequent.

) MacAlister Coleman. "The Perils of Success." Birth Control Review, Volume XIV, Number 12 (December 1930), pages 345 to 349.


"What is the stand of the American Birth Control League on abortion?

"The American Birth Control League is absolutely and unequivocally opposed to any but therapeutic abortion. Abortion is dangerous, physically and psychically. Universal knowledge of Birth Control would reduce it to a minimum."

) "The Answer Box." Birth Control Review, Volume XIV, Number 12 (December 1930), page 366.




1931



"Contraceptive methods will remove anxiety neurosis, which it is well-known may even lead to insanity, in men as well as in the women who fear the arrival of a child which they know they cannot properly support and rear. The children which do arrive will be well-wanted and welcome; ..."

) Adolphus Knopf, M.D. "The Family Doctor and Birth Control." Birth Control Review, Volume XV, Number 1 (January 1931), page 30.


"... the Pope has become aware that many of the faithful are limiting their families by the use of contraceptives. It is a safe prophecy that they will continue to do so, as anyone who has educated Catholic friends can verify by comparing the size of their families with those of their parents and grandparents. Some day another Pope will issue another encyclical in which this vexing problem will be eased out of the picture. Already, in other instances, Rome has done this very thing many times, and has developed the technique of changing front. A notable illustration is the reversal of the Church's attitude on the taking of interest, which handicapped Catholic commerce and industry for generations and gave the advantage to Protestant competition. It is the old story of organized religion versus science. Science always wins in this conflict. Every non-sectarian hospital in the world aims to save the mother in childbirth if both cannot be saved, but His Holiness, in the interests of a dogma, would sacrifice the mother who is known to the unknown child. His opposition to birth control is equally unsound and doomed to a rapidly increasing obsolescence among those for whom he speaks."

) Reverend J.A. MacCallum, Minister of the Walnut Street Presbyterian Church, Philadelphia. "Comments on the Pope's Encyclical." Birth Control Review, Volume XV, Number 2 (February 1931), page 40.




"Birth control is a health measure ... because it decreases abortion by preventing unwanted pregnancies."

) Advertisement. Birth Control Review, Volume XV, Number 3 (March 1931), page 67.


"Perhaps in the not too distant future some Pope will command the demonstrated laws of human heredity the God-made laws of nature which govern human heredity to the close study and obedience by the faithful; that the Church may give its blessing on all efforts by one generation to insure sounder physical, more capable mental and higher emotional and spiritual qualities in its posterity, and will point out how these sacred laws of nature which govern human heredity can be used most effectively to such an end."

) "Press Clippings" (from the February 1931 Eugenical News). Birth Control Review, Volume XV, Number 3 (March 1931), page 82.


"It is true that birth control information will be abused; it is true that before marriage and after marriage it may be misused; it is true that individuals may evade their obvious responsibilities, but nevertheless for the masses of decent and moral beings it will prove to be a good and not an evil. Some countries are confronted with the great problem of how to dispose of their surplus population ... I have faith that, though the knowledge of birth control is being abused and will be abused, the masses of men will use it morally and intelligently to limit their offspring, so that those whom they bring into this world will have opportunities for health, for sunshine, for recreation, for education and for happiness."

) Rabbi Ferdinand M. Isserman. "Happiness is Blessed." Birth Control Review, Volume XV, Number 3 (March 1931), page 84.


"This new animal who swears, crosses her legs, dresses unconventionally and indulges in what were formerly masculine vices, is paradoxically a serf to her new sexual freedom. Under her new regime she has freed herself from fecundity only to indulge her exhibitionistic and narcissistic tendencies and carries her infantile demands into maturity ...

"The answer to Mr. Schmalhausen's confused chapter called "Is Civilization Going Insane?" is yes, undoubtedly."

) Gertrude Doniger. Review of Samuel D. Schmalhausen's book Our Changing Human Nature. Birth Control Review, Volume XV, Number 3 (March 1931), page 88.


"That serious evils, such as extra-marital sex relations, may be increased by a general knowledge of contraceptives must be recognized ... Guided by the past experience of the race as to the effects of scientific discovery upon human welfare, we should expect that so revolutionary a discovery as control of conception would carry dangers as well as benefits ... These members of the Committee [on Marriage and the Home, of the Federal Council of Churches] believe that the undesirable use of contraceptives will not be indulged in by most people, and that if the influence of religion and education is properly developed the progress of knowledge will not outrun the capacity of mankind for self-control."

) "Protestants Endorse Birth Control." Birth Control Review, Volume XV, Number 4 (April 1931), page 102.




"Birth control and the decreasing birth-rate will influence the ultimate population greatly. The birth-rate is still going down, but it must stop somewhere. Possibly babies will be supplied according to the laws of supply and demand which control the amounts of other products, such as potatoes."

) Dr. William F. Ogburn, University of Chicago and President of the American Statistical Association, quoted in "News Notes." Birth Control Review, Volume XV, Number 4 (April 1931), page 124.


"Birth control will help to eliminate disease, promote the welfare of the individual, of the family and society. Continence may be the ideal as the Catholic Church points out, but we may leave it for the time when we become angels."

) Matheus P. de Freitas of Santa Cruz, Flores, the Azores. Letter to the Birth Control Review, Volume XV, Number 4 (April 1931), page 126.


"Let us meet the issue squarely. The opponents of birth control assert that if contraceptive knowledge becomes general, it will be abused. This is a truism that should be accepted without argument. Let us grant this point to the reactionaries, and ask who will commit the offense?

"There is but one answer: Those who now resort to abortion, infanticide and desertion will be the only offenders. These crimes will disappear ipso facto, with contraceptive knowledge. Morality, common sense and religion are all on the side of the reformers. The population-need of the world today is better people, not more people. Desired children will not only be prepared for but will be cared for. This means human betterment."

) C.V. Roman, M.D., Nashville, Tennessee. Letter to the Birth Control Review, Volume XV, Number 4 (April 1931), page 127.


"Experience and science teach (in spite of occasional sporadic objections by mono-idea-ists, for whom purity and abstinence are synonymous, who would willingly sacrifice the health, happiness and morality of all to the veritable Moloch of their one-sided, unscientific, ignorant idealism that normal, mutual, moderately frequent sexual relations between husband and wife preserve the home and build the homes of the future. The abrogation or practical abrogation of such relations means instant increase in neurosis and other illnesses, increased promiscuity, increased divorce, increased unhappiness, increased menace to society by the numberless fanatical propagandisms which are the sequel to lives lived entirely against nature's dictates. In short, without this factor of moderate, mutual satisfaction of the sex hunger, the home and civilization would soon be things of the past.

) Walter F. Robie, M.D. "The Ethics of Parenthood." Birth Control Review, Volume XV, Number 5 (May 1931), pages 133 and 135.


"The work of advocates of legalized birth control is far from finished. But it has received encouraging support from this report of the Federal Council. I am inclined to think that the encyclical of the Pope will also operate in this direction eventually. It is a good thing to have



the opposition brought out into the open and shown, as in this Papal letter, to have so little to rest upon."

) Dr. Henry Neuman, Leader, Brooklyn Society of Ethical Culture. "Comments ..... and Comments On the Report of The Federal Council of Churches of Christ in America." Birth Control Review, Volume XV, Number 5 (May 1931), page 143.


"Since a week ago last Saturday we can no longer expect them to defend the law of God. These sects will work out they very logic of their ways and in fifty or one hundred years there will be only the Church and paganism. We will be left to fight the battle alone and we will."

) Father Fulton J. Sheen, Catholic University of America. "Comments ..... and Comments On the Report of The Federal Council of Churches of Christ in America." Birth Control Review, Volume XV, Number 5 (May 1931), page 143.


"The Holy Catholic Church has recently lost much prestige by playing cheap ward politics with fiddling-Nero Mussolini, an episode as tragic as her captivity at Avignon. Nevertheless, much human wisdom is still with her. Intelligent men and scholarly men have been elected to the papacy, and such may be the next incumbent of the throne of Saint Peter. As soon as a pope is elected with any knowledge of ethnology, the ridiculous childish blunder of his present Holiness in speaking of the sin of Onan will be repudiated."

) Joe Gould's review of An Introductory Study of the Family, by Edgar Schmiedeler. Birth Control Review, Volume XV, Number 5 (May 1931), page 150.


[***] "I do not see how a country [Japan] so overpopulated can progress physically, educationally, economically, or any other way."

) E.D.J., New York City, New York. Letter entitled "From a Traveler in Japan," to the Birth Control Review, Volume XV, Number 5 (May 1931), page 156.


""The abolition of marriage in the form now practiced," wrote Godwin, "will be attended with no evils. It really happens in this, as in other cases, that the positive laws which are made to restrain our vices irritate and multiply them." It is more than a century since those wise words were spoken. But the great pioneer who uttered them exerted no influence on legislation, and their truth has now had time to be illustrated by thousands of prohibition laws against all sorts of real or imaginary vices.

"The ever increasing approach to social and industrial equality of the sexes, the steady rise and extension of the divorce movement, the changed conceptions of the morality of sexual relationships, the spread of contraception, all these influences are real, probably permanent, and they have never been found at work before in combination, seldom even separately. Not one of them, however, when examined with care, bears within it any necessary seeds of destruction. On the contrary, they are adapted to purify and fortify, rather than to weaken, the institution of the family, to enable it to work more vigorously and effectively rather than to impair its functions as what has been termed "the unit of civilization." It is true that the younger women of today are often dissatisfied with marriage, but that attitude is a belated recognition that they are entitled to satisfaction, and we may accept it as wholesome ...

"The greater facility of divorce aids the formation of the most satisfactory union. A greater freedom between the sexes before marriage, even if it has sometimes led to license, is not only itself beneficial, but the proper method of preparing for a more intimate permanent union. And the exercise of contraceptive control is the indispensable method of selecting the best possibilities of offspring and excluding from the world those who ought never to be born."

Havelock Ellis. "Marriage An Enduring Institution." Birth Control Review, Volume XV, Number 6 (June 1931), pages 166 and 167.

"The idea of controlling population in either its quantitative or qualitative aspects is comparatively recent. Malthus gave a very pessimistic view of humanity's future because he did not envisage the possibility of controlling population increase. Francis Place and his confreres held a more optimistic outlook, but their agitation seems to have been almost wholly nullified by the general mysticism of the day and the rapid growth of British industrialism. A generation or more later Greg and Dalton, inspired by Darwinian findings, glimpsed the possibility of improving the hereditary quality of the race by selection for marriage and parenthood. It must be said, however, that the period from 1865 to 1931 has produced little in the way of tangible and positive eugenic results. The eugenics viewpoint has been assiduously cultivated by many able minds and is slowly but surely entering into the public consciousness. Sooner or later it may become one of the primary postulates of the mores relating to race perpetuation.

"The practical results of the eugenics movement, however, seem limited to a few laws relating to sterilization or segregation of defectives, and spasmodic and ineffective efforts of the state and some religious bodies to prevent the marriage of certain individuals. Meanwhile there has been a rapidly growing mass of evidence that present tendencies in racial reproduction are dysgenic. The phenomenon is general throughout the Western world and the reason is everywhere the same. Neo-Malthusianism has outrun eugenics. The idea of controlling the size of the family has sunk more deeply into popular mores than has the idea of controlling the quality. Could anything make clearer the complete interdependence of the two phases of population control? It is suicidal to control quantity with no regard for quality; that way lies racial degeneration and social decay. On the other hand, it is impossible to control quality without controlling the rates of multiplication of the various stocks in the population. In the last analysis there is no way to control quality. Practical eugenics and selective rates of reproduction are synonymous, when such selection gives preference to better strains. Birth control might thus become not only the most effective but the essential instrument of eugenic policy. The present dysgenic tendencies are primarily due to the relatively high rate of multiplication among those who as yet have no effective means of birth control. And, since family limitation has become an ineradicable part of popular custom, the only way to turn dysgenic reproduction into eugenic is to alter the incidence of birth control.

"In times past certain eugenic enthusiasts have indulged in the absurd fantasy that we should soon be breeding strains of musicians, mathematicians and inventors, and even of moronic robots. Even were that possible we should have to regulate the supply of each. But such notions have yielded to the more sober realization that eugenic policies must, for a long time, be of a broad, general character applicable to the population at large. Here again birth control appears as the most effective instrument. At the present juncture of affairs, at any rate, the most effective eugenic measure before Western nations would seem to be the spread of contraceptive knowledge to those classes that have been least successful in the struggle for existence. "

F.H. Hankins. "The Interdependence of Eugenics and Birth Control." Birth Control Review, Volume XV, Number 6 (June 1931), pages 170 and 171.


"You cannot give people the means to avoid conception without running the risk of them adopting these measures to such an extent as to end by having no children at all ... Thus the vast proportion of the children born today do not necessarily present evidence of any desire for "few and better children:" they merely present unimpeachable evidence that birth control technique is still faulty.

"Because the State's need is directly antagonistic to the individual's need, and the individual happens to have in hand the trump card, it is only a question of contraceptive technique reaching perfection for the birth-rate to cease all together. Society may decide that more children are essential, but society is powerless if no individual member of that society is disposed to shoulder the burden.

"To those obsessed with "race suicide" let me say that when the time comes, as indubitably it will come, that babies are becoming startlingly rare, the State will be compelled to subsidize childbirth the one solution if civilization is to endure."

George Ryley Scott. "Do Women Want Children?" Birth Control Review, Volume XV, Number 6 (June 1931), pages 172 and 173.


"To maintain a patriotic mob mindedness that will keep the population willing to furnish unlimited money for an unnecessary military preparedness, there must be a bogey of national proportions. In the present decade that bogey is Japan. She is the "Yellow Peril" that is thought to threaten the peace and security of the Western world. Alone, or as the leader of Asian hordes, she is believed to be preparing and all but prepared to attack American defenses, overrun her territory, destroy her people, and Orientalize her culture ... That Japan is neither a military nor an industrial danger to the Western world is a well-known fact ... The "Yellow Peril" is a propagandistic euphuism ... It exists in the minds of those who conjure it up, not in the world of external reality ... In any war with a major power the Japanese realize that they would lose. But win or lose, such a war would mean financial ruin. This the Japanese leaders know as do the intelligent persons of all other countries ..."

E.B. Reuter. "Birth Control in Japan." Birth Control Review, Volume XV, Number 6 (June 1931), page 176.


"The author believes that should an absolutely reliable, fool-proof method of birth control become available to adolescents, the modern attitude would be one of relief; that the new achievement of science would not increase sex indulgence among the adolescents, because there is already a general belief that they have trustworthy methods of protection against pregnancy ..."

Ernest R. Groves. Review of Floyd Dell's book Love in the Machine Age. Birth Control Review, Volume XV, Number 6 (June 1931), page 180.


"... contraception is definitely indicated in selected cases and would be a constructive step in decreasing hereditary diseases, lessening prostitution, reducing child labor, destitution, and the resulting need for charity ... Birth Control clinics have the virtue of selectivity of cases, ethical advice, and medical sponsorship. They do not countenance the charlatan or the cultist, and are a potent factor in the elimination of the abortionist."

Editorial in the Rhode Island Medical Journal, May 1931. Quoted in Birth Control Review, Volume XV, Number 6 (June 1931), page 188.


"And it is my well considered opinion that with the further spread of prevenceptive knowledge and with divorce becoming easier, the number of marriages will go on increasing. Instead of taking place at a later and later age, as was the case a generation or two ago, marriage will take place at a considerably earlier age. And this will do away, to a great extent, if not with promiscuity, certainly with commercialized prostitution.

"Whether or not the people will still solemnize their marriages with religious or legal ceremonies is a matter of minor importance. One thing is certain: Marriage in the future will not be such a practically indissoluble arrangement or contract as it is now. On the petition of both parties a divorce or dissolution of marriage will be granted without further ceremony ... Here the State should have nothing to say. When there are children the State will make sure that they will be properly cared for and provided for, before a divorce is granted.

William J. Robinson, M.D. "The Future of Marriage." Birth Control Review, Volume XV, Number 7 (July 1931), page 211.


"East (loc. cit. has given a magnificent exposition of Malthus' doctrine in the light of modern knowledge. I cannot do better than to quote him at length: "Let us look forward and draw a picture of the world as it could be at the end of the century with a continued expansionist policy. Food exportation had ceased come thirty years before [in 1970], except for the exchange of specialties; all temperate regions had then reached the era of decreasing returns in agriculture. The tropics are being populated as fast as their submission to the hand of man makes it possible. Gradual reduction in population increase has occurred, due to the intensity of the struggle; yet there are 3,000 million people in the world. Migration has ceased; the bars have been put up in every country. Those nations where there is still a fair degree of comfort wish to retain it as long as possible. Food is scarce and costly. Man works from sun to sun. When crops are good there is unrest but no rest, there is privation and hardship; when crops are bad there is mass starvation such as China and India had experienced long before. Agricultural efficiency has risen 50 per cent during the past half-century through the pressure of stern necessity, yet the food resources of each individual are smaller than ever before. Where war occurs it is war of extermination, for only by extermination can the conquerors profit; where peace remains it is under the shadow of a struggle as grim as war. Morale has weakened, and with it morals. The death-rate has risen until it equals the birth-rate. And the potential fecundity of the human race still remains at 60 per thousand annually. It is not a pretty picture, but I do not believe it to be overdrawn. It is a portrait of the China and India of today, and the China and India of today will be the world of tomorrow then the world as a whole reaches the same population status.""

Dwight Elmer Minnich. "The Biologist's Point of View." Birth Control Review, Volume XV, Number 8 (August 1931), pages 229 and 230.


"Certainly if we are going to have marriage after we get rid of religion (which I hope will be soon, but which I fear will be several thousand years from now it would be an entirely different kind of marriage from the marriage we have at the present time."

John B. Watson of New York City, New York. Letter to the Birth Control Review, Volume XV, Number 8 (August 1931), page 238.


"Not only has Birth Control nothing in common with abortion but it is a weapon of the greatest value in fighting this evil. With its help we may hope to limit and, I trust, eradicate this criminal practice."

Rachelle S. Yarros, M.D. "Abortion." Birth Control Review, Volume XV, Number 9 (September 1931), page 254.


"By his knowledge and power man has in a measure risen above nature, he has eaten of the fruit of the tree of knowledge and has become as the gods, knowing good and evil, and now it remains to be seen whether in future ages his race may secure the fruit of the tree of life and become immortal."

Edward Grant Conklin, quoted in the Birth Control Review, Volume XV, Number 9 (September 1931), page 260.


"... It is the opportunity to hold up before our youth the ideals of a Christian home. What will those ideals be? We will have to discover them; we do not fully know them yet. But at least we may be sure a Christian home will not be a home in which sex is thought to be naturally a filthy thing. It will not be a place where shame goes hand in hand with physical love. It will not be a place where the mother must bear child after child, some of them unfit to live, until her own health is forfeit. Rather it will be a place where children are wanted and where they are eagerly sought when health and finances permit. At other times it will be a place where physical love need not be burdened with the worry of unwanted pregnancies. Surely a Christian home ought to be at least this."

The Survey Graphic, August 1931, quoted in "In the Magazines: The Churches and the Stork." Birth Control Review, Volume XV, Number 9 (September 1931), pages 268 and 269.

"The realization of the fact that the natural propensities of homo sapiens are promiscuous instead of monogamous means that we must understand at the very beginning that our present marital organization, with its economic motivation and legal coercions, is in conflict with biological impulses and not in harmony with them. The primary source of sexual difficulty and distress in our civilization is inherent in that conflict. "Monogamic patriarchal societies," Briffault has pointed out, "are particularly abnormal and monstrous in a biological sense."

"Pregnancy undoubtedly requires a degree of protection which man, economically at least, can supply better than the child-bearing woman; but this does not mean that the man must be her monogamous lover. She can derive protection from three lovers as well as one, and be none the worse for it. There remains, it must not be denied, the problem of paternity, which under the conditions of our culture would be too important to persist unsolved. Under a new society, however, where, as John B. Watson urges, children will be cared for by many mothers instead of one, this problem would largely disappear.

"... It was only the coming of birth control that was able to remove this fear [of pregnancy] and shift the emphasis in sex life from its procreational aspects to the recreational. In the sex world as well as the economic or political, women have become the equals of men. The threat of pregnancy, which has terrified so many women in the past into a submission to our culture, is no longer a Damocles' sword hanging constantly over their heads."

V.F. Calverton. "Marriage a la Mode." Birth Control Review, Volume XV, Number 10 (October 1931), pages 282 to 284.


"The connection between the restrictive law and the psychology that results from the practice of inadequate birth control methods merits attention. One need not be a student of pathological psychology to be aware that there is an intimate connection between certain traits of character, and types of sex practices. The French desire to limit the size of the family is often achieved by doubtful sex practices, instead of by actual birth control technique ... They have, I believe, contributed to the unpleasant traits I find in the present-day French character. There is undoubtedly a connection between unsatisfactory birth control methods and general disagreeableness ... They [the French] concede this and explain it on the basis of their suffering and losses during the [First World] war. But the Germans suffered as well, and yet, in general, they do not exhibit the disagreeable and often unfriendly characteristics now so prevalent in France. The origin of this change, in my opinion, lies not in the war but, largely, in the anti-birth control law passed in 1920. Unsatisfactory sex relations and charm are not long compatible. Inadequate technique results in exacerbated nerves. And it might not perhaps be extravagant to trace a connection between France's isolation at this moment and the world's impatience with her and those characteristics which are the result of the Frenchman's present day personal practices ..."

Jesse Quitman. "France Under Anti-Birth Control Law." Birth Control Review, Volume XV, Number 10 (October 1931), page 286.


"I think that the first great difficulty which hinders progress from coming more quickly is that the world is becoming too full. The total increase of the world's population is not less than twelve millions every year, and probably fourteen millions. If that continues it will soon become necessary to put up notices saying "Standing room only." Some calculators have estimated that in the time of the great-great-grandchildren of Americans now living America will be absolutely full, and will be on the verge of a debacle too horrible to think of.

Sir Arthur Thomson. "Four Factors Retard Human Progress." Birth Control Review, Volume XV, Number 10 (October 1931), page 289.


"The author estimates that there are now 2000 million people in the world and, at the present rate of increase, there will be 8000 million in the year of 2070 and 75,000,000 million in 3000 A.D. According to Dr. O.E. Baker, there are only about 10,000,000 square miles or one-fifth of the earth's surface physically suitable for crops; only about 4,000,000 square miles are cropped at present. Professor Penck thinks the world can support only 8,000,000,000 people. Professor Wilkinson is not concerned with population problems beyond 150 years from now, and thinks it is indeed fortunate that none of us will be living in 3000 A.D.

H.G. Duncan. Review of H.L. Wilkinson's book The World's Population Problems and a White Australia. Birth Control Review, Volume XV, Number 10 (October 1931), page 290.


"The theory of birth control makes no extravagant claims; but I am of the belief that the acceptance of birth control by society, and its frank teaching, can help diminish criminal activity!"

Montgomery Mulford. "Birth Control Lessens Crime." Birth Control Review, Volume XV, Number 10 (October 1931), page 293.


"Dr. Isabel Beck, addressing the Far Rockaway Chapter of the Hadassah on October 4th, pointed out that the prohibitions against the free distribution of birth control information brought economic as well as social evils, and was largely responsible for our high divorce rate."

"News Notes: New York." Birth Control Review, Volume XV, Number 10 (October 1931), page 297.


""The Prevention of Abortion," Editorial, The Chinese Recorder, September. Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld, known the world over as one of the leading authorities on sex problems ... is of the opinion that induced abortion, however neatly performed, is always risky and leaves the woman operated upon more or less of a physical wreck. His long experience has so told him. Now since contraception would make artificial abortion unnecessary, it should even for that reason alone commend itself to any community which is at all concerned with the welfare and the alleviation of suffering of its members."

"In the Magazines." Birth Control Review, Volume XV, Number 10 (October 1931), page 301.


"Dr. Dewey, who presided, said that the birth control movement "is a part of the long-continued historic struggle between two forces between old ideas, old habits, ignorance, dogma, prejudice, routine on the one hand, and new ideas brought to light by the progress of scientific discovery on the other. Every new discovery means a new power of control ...

"The present population of the world is 1,900 millions; the world is already too full ... Unless a solution is found, four or five million industrialized human beings will have to get off the earth ... Life will come to mean a world without animals, for we shall not be able to support even squirrels. There will be no open country, no streams, cataracts, and woods, no independent travel and still the increase will continue. On the other hand, think of the freedom a world of 350 millions might enjoy a garden spaced with fine individuals moving on from strength to strength in happy conditions."

"H.G. Wells Speaks on Birth Control." Birth Control Review, Volume XV, Number 11 (November 1931), page 317.


"However, it is not only tuberculosis which becomes aggravated by an added pregnancy, many other ailments such as kidney, heart, nervous and mental diseases often cause the untimely death of mothers whose life would have been preserved if proper contraceptive methods had been used. One condition which often leads to serious mental trouble is the co-called anxiety neurosis, the woman's constant fear of becoming pregnant when her physical or economic condition will not permit any addition to the family. When pregnancy does occur the women in desperation often resort to abortion, which frequently leads to chronic invalidism or death. These criminal abortions are largely responsible for our country's high maternal mortality rate. One would think that the whole American medical profession would be aroused to prevent such conditions.

"What would be gained if we followed the example of Holland, where birth control has been officially sanctioned for over fifty years? Fewer mothers would die from tuberculosis and other diseases, leaving orphaned children. Young people would not hesitate to marry through fear of children arriving too soon and too often, if they knew that they could plan their family according to their economic condition. There would be fewer marital maladjustments, fewer divorces, less illegitimacy, less prostitution; syphilis and crime would be diminished. Our taxes would be lower and the general health of the nation would be better. There would be decided physical, material, moral and even spiritual progress ..."

S. Adolphus Knopf, M.D. "Birth Control in Tuberculosis and Other Serious Diseases." Birth Control Review, Volume XV, Number 12 (December 1931), pages 343 and 344.


"These populations [in India and China] breed recklessly and in spite of widespread abortion and infanticide, their numbers are kept within limits only by disease, vice, famine, plague and war. All the worst human ills in aggravated form are found in such societies, while the refinements of civilized life are inexorably denied to vast hordes of the populace.

"Such is the inevitable outcome of unrestrained reproduction. Such seems to be the ideal toward which certain opponents of birth control would have Western nations gravitate ...

"The evils of ignorance, superstitions, low standards of living, juvenile delinquency, quarreling parents, unwanted and uncherished children thus tend to constitute a vicious circle. Birth control is one of the most effective attacks upon this whole galaxy of ancient evils. For this reason it is the most far-reaching social reform movement of the modern era. For this reason also it is most bitterly opposed by those institutions which thrive on the perpetuation of ignorance and uncivilization among the masses ...

Frank H. Hankins. "A Far-Reaching Social Movement." Birth Control Review, Volume XV, Number 12 (December 1931), page 347.


1932

"We give this challenge to the proponents of birth control. We [Roman Catholics] too, are of yesterday, but we shall be the America of tomorrow; we shall be the majority. We shall occupy and dominate every sphere of activity; the farm, the factory, the counting house, the schools, the professions, the press, the legislature. We shall dominate because we shall have the numbers and the intelligence, and above all, the moral strength to struggle, to endure, to persevere. To you we shall leave the gods and goddesses which you have made to your image and likeness, the divinities of ease, of enjoyment, of mediocrity. We shall leave you the comforts of decadence and the sentence of extinction."

Monsignor John A. Ryan, quoted in Leon F. Whitney. "Religion and the Birth Rate." Birth Control Review, Volume XVI, Number 4 (April 1932), page 101.


"In other words, the way to achieve world peace is to remove one of the causes of war which lies beneath the surface, and which is not talked of as much as national rights and national honor. This is uncontrolled birth rates. We must have a widespread dissemination of contraceptive knowledge throughout the world. We must have population control; a control which is guided through the plans laid down at international conferences on population and migration. No program for world peace can hope to succeed which does not make place among its other provisions for the increased use of birth control."

Algernon Black. "Toward World Peace." Birth Control Review, Volume XVI, Number 4 (April 1932), page 108.


"Contraceptive knowledge combined with sex hygiene becomes, thus, a tool in breaking down a host of puritanical inhibitions which are responsible for much conflict. Birth control, therefore, will in the future contribute much to a happier marriage by removing the fear of pregnancy and the economic burden which frequent childbearing in bound to have upon the family."

Ernest Mowrer. "Birth Control and Domestic Discord." Birth Control Review, Volume XVI, Number 5 (May 1932), page 139.


"He [J.Page Lichtenberger] corrects many of the popular misconceptions and prejudices concerning divorce. He examines various aspects of birth control, and concludes that on the whole it is a factor strongly favorable to the removal of frustrations and the stabilizing of a marriage."

J.F. Crawford. Review of J. Page Lichtenberger's book Divorce A Social Interpretation. Birth Control Review, Volume XVI, Number 6 (June 1932, the "Negro Number"), page 181.


"What is probably the greatest triumph of human will and intelligence that the race has yet won in its efforts to control its own destiny ... is the simple remedy of voluntary, scientific birth control. Professor Warren Thompson, of the University of Michigan, in his new book, Danger Spots in World Population, compares birth control in its probable influence on social evolution with the discovery of fire and the invention of printing. I can not but think its influence on man's biological future may be even greater than these. For, if the human race is ever to become better in its inborn bodily health, its inborn intelligence and its inborn moral character, I think undoubtedly the greatest single agency will be man's newly acquired capacity to control the reproduction of his own species ...

"Voluntary birth control leads the able, unselfish, long-lives, intelligent, moral, and socially minded members of the community to produce the larger families, while those less energetic and less endowed with gifts of nature reduce the number of their offspring. If this be true, then birth

control is the most powerful moral agent of which the human race has ever become possessed ... No money today could be devoted to a greater research than to establish the truth or falsity of this preliminary evidence. The aim of science, Manstreet, is the control of life, and if man can control the reproduction of his own species, and fit their numbers to each nation to the demands of a high standard of existence, a wide use of liberty and a lofty culture, it will be the surest possible guarantee of a world of peace, of happiness, and of material and spiritual progress."

Maynard Shipley. Review of Albert Edward Wiggam's book Sorry But You're Wrong About It. Birth Control Review, Volume XVI, Number 6 (June 1932, the "Negro Number"), page 183.


"Modern contraceptive methods will do much to overcome the present wave of criminal abortions among married women, and will, in a large measure, do away with an important part of the maternal mortality and morbidity resulting from this cause."

Harold Mack. "Preventive Medicine and Abortion." Medical Journal and Record, May 18, 1932. Quoted in Birth Control Review, Volume XVI, Numbers 7 and 8 (July-August 1932), page 220.


"No form of economic development in China will be of any avail unless there is a fundamental change in social outlook affecting family life, the growth of population and the standards demanded by the workers. What else does this mean but birth control?"

J.B. Taylor, quoted in Birth Control Review, Volume XVI, Numbers 7 and 8 (July-August, 1932), page 220.


"Man's desire for a better life has led to his ingenious devices of central heating, plumbing, skyscrapers, schools, airplanes, etc. and to birth control. The novelty today is not birth control, but the attempt to develop more precise and pleasing methods of doing what human beings have always sought, and doubtless will always seek, to do."

Lorine Pruette. "Birth Selection vs. Birth Control." Birth Control Review, Volume XVI, Number 10 (October 1932), page 253.


1933

"If I were directing the birth control movement for 1933, I would call together in conference the national leaders in the field of all those interested in the population question of America to take stock in the current situation. I would call their attention to the fact that the birth rate of the United States was falling so rapidly as to virtually imperil the continued existence of the country. I would point out that, under present conditions, our native fertility was not replacing the present generation and that if a halt were not called, every previous estimate of early stabilization would need to be revised at a lower level. Gains from immigration are over probably for a long time. We are losing over 100,000 a year through excess emigration. With the present tendency of the birthrate unchecked, we will arrive at a stationary population in a relatively few decades and, after that, the population will go down decade after decade in a fashion that will send cold shivers down the backs of all who understand what this means and who have any love for their country.

"If I were directing the movement, I would ask such a conference to bring this desperate situation to the attention of the whole American people, that they may be apprised of what a non-controlled propagandist movement has accomplished, and what it may lead the country to, unless proper checks are immediately put in force. It means nothing less than a strong appeal to the intelligent people of the country to realize what is going on. Unless there is a change in the attitude of the people resulting from such knowledge, conditions may soon get out of hand. The birth control movement will have much to answer for unless it can square its accounts with the American people by emphasizing at this very time the need for correctives of its own activities in earlier years. It has placed bundles of dynamite all over the country. It is now high time that it began to bring them back or at least to remove the fuses."

Luis Dublin. "Programs and Wishes For 1933." Birth Control Review, Volume XVII, Number 1 (January 1933), page 5.


[***] "Feature the stabilizing effect, socially, of the wider spread of contraceptive information, in that it allows early marriage without fear of unwanted pregnancy and progeny. In this way it discourages extra-marital sex-relationships on the part of those who would like to combine their sex-life with the development of the home.

"Try to influence the point of view of legislators and others in public life until they adopt, as natural, an attitude which is sufficiently honest and courageous to prevent the irresponsible production of future public charges. This can be largely accomplished by compulsory sterilization of the obviously unfit. As a corollary those groups religious or otherwise which consist on breeding unfit individuals when information is available to prevent it, should be made to pay the full expense of the upkeep of the unfit so produced."

C.C. Little. "Programs and Wishes For 1933." Birth Control Review, Volume XVII, Number 1 (January 1933), page 6.


"... many great civilizations of the past seem to have had, as one can judge in the absence of census data, a virtually stationary population."

Norman Himes. "An Ultimate Goal For Birth Control." Birth Control Review, Volume XVII, Number 2 (February 1933), page 37.


"A decline in [population] numbers would replace diminishing returns by increasing returns, and the resulting abundance would release the parental instinct and raise the birthrate."

Letter from B. Dunlop, M.D., London, England, to the Birth Control Review, Volume XVII, Number 2 (February 1933), page 39.


[***] "As I understand it, the final goal of birth control is, by limiting reproduction, to improve the race, to promote individual and domestic happiness, and to curtail such scourges as war, famine, insanity, poverty, unemployment, and congenital crime."

Holmes Alexander. "The Case for Legislation." Birth Control Review, Volume XVII, Number 2 (February 1933), page 46.


"The O'Malley anti-birth control bill, introduced into the Wisconsin legislature in March, was given a hearing before the Committee on Public Welfare on April 18th ... Supporting the bill were Catholic organizations, and petitions bearing 90,000 signatures according to newspaper accounts. Opposing the bill and denouncing it as a `vicious admixture of religion, politics, and ignorance' were church leaders, lawyers, members of the faculty of the University of Wisconsin, social workers, club women, doctors and mothers. Several educators and ministers stated that if the bill became a law they would consider it their duty to disregard it. Professor E.A. Ross of the University, (member of the editorial board of the [Birth Control] Review summed up the opposition to the bill, saying: "Through ignorance you have created a monstrous bill one of the most shocking I have ever heard of. Pass this bill and you will have a nation of morons in 200 years.""

"Editorial." Birth Control Review, Volume XVII, Number 5 (May 1933), page 116.


"If our population should increase as fast as that of England and Wales increased during the past 130 years, it would reach more than 500,000,000 by 2060, and about 2,500,000,000 by 2190."

Guy Irving Burch. "Production Versus Reproduction." Birth Control Review, Volume XVII, Number 5 (May 1933), page 123.


"Reform of the divorce law in the interest of justice and sincerity would cease to `advertise the cruelty of Christianity' and would substitute true grounds for `collective adultery' and would tend to elevate the moral and spiritual values of marriage above its physical aspects."

J. Page Lichtenberger. Review of J.F. Worsley-Boden's book "Mischiefs of the Marriage Laws." Birth Control Review, Volume XVII, Number 5 (May 1933), page 126.


"The various plans proposed above will be of value in bringing about relief in the present [employment] crisis, but they cannot be regarded as a definite cure for our labor troubles or as an insurance against a recurrence in the future. In the final analysis limitation of population must be recognized as the only practical means of ultimately and permanently overcoming our employment difficulties."

W.J. Ruth. "Population Control For Unemployment." Birth Control Review, Volume XVII, Number 5 (May 1933), page 134.


"Our admitted high standard of living has been maintained during the one hundred and fifty years of our national existence not by the intelligent balance of our births with our deaths by rather by the reckless consumption of our national resources, occasioned by a continual expansion and the establishment of new frontiers. Because of these resources we were able to absorb the several flood tides of immigration from Europe. A new situation now faces us. Our population cup is well filled, and our national resources are no longer viewed as limitless."

Dawson F. Dean. "For Life's Enrichment." Birth Control Review, Volume XVII, Number 6 (June 1933), page 148.


"Is it unreasonable to expect that when the demons of fear, superstition, religious fanaticism and institutional exploitation have been definitely routed, and birth control becomes an accepted social procedure, fully legalized, systematized, and efficiently administered, we will thereby have laid the foundation on which economic stability can be erected?"

Dawson F. Dean. "For Life's Enrichment." Birth Control Review, Volume XVII, Number 6 (June 1933), page 149.


"Nor should sympathy go out to all cases of illegitimate pregnancies, since this would lead to such utter disregard of precaution and such a lowering of moral tone that the stamina of our young people would be readily undermined. After all, the thing that distinguishes the human race from animals is the development of self-control and due consideration in our mode of living of our responsibilities to the social order. If in our sympathy for the poor depleted mother we set up laws that will make the irresponsible members of society take advantage of situations and lead a life of sensuous gratification we will surely harm civilization.

"Dr. Rongy is firmly convinced that contraceptive advice and abortion are but two different forms of birth control, and that the two cannot be separated in any consideration of this subject. Many would disagree with this statement, feeling that the destruction of life even in its earliest forms is very different from the conscious limitation of offspring.

"As in every form of subterfuge against the law, there has developed from the abortion situation a group who have made a "racket" out of it. Bribery and protection, blackmail and fraud are partners in this miserable business.

Fred Tausig, M.D. Review of A.J. Rongy's M.D.'s book Abortion: Legal or Illegal. Birth Control Review, Volume XVII, Number 6 (June 1933), pages 153 and 154.


"Birth Control, today, is recognized not only as a basic women's right, but as an essential factor in family welfare, public health and economic security, as a means of promoting national peace and race betterment."

Eleanor Dwight Jones, President, American Birth Control League. "To Readers of the Birth Control Review." Birth Control Review, Volume XVII, Number 7 (July 1933), page 163.


"Fought by a religious hierarchy as emotional and fanatical as the most crystallized of the prohibitionists, the birth control movement has steadily made progress even in the enemy's campage. The increasing army of liberated deserters from the antiquated social code of that camp continues to grow by thousands and tens of thousands. The living offshoot of the old religions which demanded a just and cruel God, had to force its way into the heart of a timid humanity; and history is repeating itself. Christians the world over whether they take that name or not are refusing to enlist in the ranks of a God who demands that women shall be bent and broken on the torture rack of ignorance, or who encourages the animal breeding of unwanted and uncared-for children.

"Caught in the logical dilemma of allowing the use of the "safe" period, a scientifically discovered half-truth of physiology, and of forbidding the use of other simple, more certain and hygienic means, the Catholic Church is in an untenable position. Its adherents are aware of that fact in direct proportion to their intelligence. If they are professional members of the hierarchy deriving their living from it, they naturally work their hardest to combat the invincible spread of contraceptive information. If they are lay members of the Catholic Church, they listen to the arguments and then quietly adopt contraception as part of their own family life. When the younger Catholics of the present generation reach positions of authority in the church, progress towards a common goal will be even swifter. The official Church, deep-dyed in Italian nationalism, may not care to admit a change in attitude."

Editorial by C.C. Little, Director of the Roscoe B. Jackson Memorial Laboratory, Bar Harbor, Maine. Birth Control Review, Volume XVII, Number 7 (July 1933), page 169.


"We find that the solution for population pressure in foreign countries is not emigration but birth control. When birth control is practised by the foreign born the birth rate of the native born will be released to some extent. When birth control reaches the colored population it will likewise have a stimulating effect upon the whites. When birth control reaches the rural districts we are likely to have a higher birth rate in the urban centers. Birth control practiced by the lower economic and social classes of the population will stimulate the birth rate of the upper classes, as is the case in cities of northern and western Europe today. Reducing the birthrate of the unfit will stimulate and increase the number of the fit. Lastly, when birth control reaches all economic and social classes of the population we shall have smaller but better families."

"This principle which is generally associated with such great thinkers as Plato, Aristotle, Franklin, Malthus, Mill, Darwin, Galton, Walker, and a host of contemporary population authorities, is that the capacity for population growth inherent in all plants and animals, including man, is far greater than the means of subsistence that can be prepared for it. Consequently population growth is not free to expand but rather is held to a certain course by the economic and social factors of population pressure and standards of living."

Guy Irving Birch, Director of the Population Reference Bureau. "Editorial." Birth Control Review, Volume XVII, Number 7 (July 1933), page 170.


"It [birth control] is essential to the economist, who would equalize wealth and income and bring the material basis of a good life within the reach of all; to the social worker and technologist, who would banish poverty, destroy slums and reduce crime and delinquency; to the eugenist, who would preserve the quality of the race and attempt to improve it; to the educator, whose millennium is a well-educated and rationally-minded populace; and to statesmen and lovers of peace, who would end war and construct a more reasonable world order."

Editorial by Frank Hankins of Smith College. Birth Control Review, Volume XVII, Number 7 (July 1933), page 171.


"Only through birth control will women ever gain control of their bodies or develop their souls. Only through knowledge can they ever unlock the great gates to a future in which joy and happiness will prevail. Only through a new consciousness of birth can humanity at large ever extricate itself from the man-made muddle in which it is grounded today."

Margaret Sanger, from her address at the World Fellowship of Faiths in Chicago, September 23rd, quoted in the Birth Control Review, Volume I, Number 3 (New Series, December 1933), page 1.


1934

"Abject poverty is the perennial lot of great numbers of the people and unemployment is chronic ... with a continued increase in population, there is not the remotest hope of making prevail an average standard of living which can be called satisfactory ... As happens in most places, the highest birth rate is among those classes least desirable from a social, economic and eugenic standpoint."

James R. Beverley, Ex-Governor of Puerto Rico. "Puerto Rico's Problem." Birth Control Review, Volume I, Number 6 (New Series, March 1934), page 5.


"Birth control must have as one of its purposes the prevention of a further decline of the hereditary capacities of the human species. Reference to any recent issue of the Census Bureau's Birth, Stillbirth and Infant Mortality Statistics for the Birth Registration Areas of the United States impresses one anew with the well-known fact that in the occupations wherein required skill is great, birth rates are low; whereas in occupations requiring little skill and little native capacity, birth rates are high.

"As an average, approximately twice as many children are born of unaccomplished persons as are born of the accomplished. Possibly the practice of contraception will eventually reach down far enough to decrease, in some measure, the unsocial disproportion in births. Let us hope so. But there is the risk that contraception will not soon enough forestall the intellectual bankruptcy of humanity; and that one far-reaching result, the democratic solution of social problems will have utterly vanished long before there is an approach to equal birth rates.

"We must examine our folkways. We must weigh new proposals with a caution against too much worship of earlier organization. We must be open-minded, and alert. We must prepare for various experiments in positive eugenics."

Elmer Pendell. "Positive Eugenics." Birth Control Review, Volume I, Number 6 (New Series, March 1934), page 5.


"The health of the family depends on several factors.

1. The prevention of venereal diseases. This can only be accomplished by early marriage which will prevent promiscuity and its resultant prostitution, and traffic in women.

2. The complete elimination of abortion as a means of regulating the family. Present scientific knowledge of birth control has reached such a stage that abortion is entirely unnecessary and the abortion rate is mute evidence of the neglect of society to care for its mothers. Knowledge of contraception takes from a woman her greatest fear in marriage, and replaces it with the desire to have children when she is ready and able.

4. Education along sex lines should be such that from infancy through childhood, adolescence and to maturity, the individuals will be able to avoid mental and emotional conflict on this subject.

7. Sterilization of the insane and feeble-minded has become a necessary institution in modern society. Its value in the prevention of the birth of people unable to care for themselves or their offspring and of people who have even no value to themselves is obvious."

"... Abortion as a means of limiting the family must be recognized as an extreme danger to the life and health of your women. Check the death rate from this cause in your own country and visit your hospitals to see the number of women who are fighting for their lives against hemorrhage, fever and infection. Talk with the physicians in your cities who are specializing in women's diseases and learn of the many, many cases they have that are suffering for long years from inflammatory processes in the tubes and ovaries; learn of the cases of sterility where the woman would give learn of the cases of sterility where the woman would give anything to have a child; and learn of the women who undergo a painful and more dangerous confinement due to the previous infection; then you will realize with me the tremendous damage done by abortions. There is hardly a country today where the death rate from this cause is not going up. Even when the operation is legalized and done in hospitals with well-trained physicians, it is still a terribly destructive experience.

"The application of our present knowledge of birth control methods can practically eliminate abortions. The technique is so simple that it can be applied anywhere as long as thorough instruction is first given ..."

Nadina R. Kavinoky, M.D. "A Program for Family Health" (Excerpts from a paper presented at the Third Pan-Pacific Women's Conference, Honolulu, August 1934). Birth Control Review, Volume II, Number 3 (New Series, December 1934), page 4.


1935

"Whatever else religion may teach today, it teaches that human progress is dependent on human initiative and human direction. Religion today regards man as able rationally and scientifically to control himself, his world, the world of energy, and the world of values for the satisfaction of human desires; and in proper proportions it glorifies these desires ...

"In accordance with this trend, the attitude of the church toward the whole problem of sex is changing. Religion is becoming actively interested in the erotic life where for ages the grossest ignorance and credulity, superstition and tyranny have held sway. In the place now occupied by such ignorance and credulity, such superstition and tyranny, the Church today will help you install knowledge and enlightened virtue.

"Too often in the past sex life has been thought of as largely an evil to be tolerated for the purpose of propagation. But as the church came to terms with science in other fields, it slowly capitulated in the field of sex. Here the church is no longer willing for nature to be uncontrolled by intelligence and scientific techniques. In recent years the following church organizations have gone on record in support of birth control:

Committee on Marriage and the Home of the Federal Council of the Churches of Christ in America

Lambeth Conference of Bishops of the Church of England

General Council of Congregational and Christian Churches

Universalist General Convention

The American Unitarian Association

Central Conference of American Rabbis

New York East Conference and other regional sections of the Methodist Episcopal Church

Special Committee of the Women's Problems Group of the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting of Friends

The 1934 Convention of the Y.W.C.A.

"The Rhythm method now making such rapid headway among Catholics, while not a satisfactory method of birth control, is nevertheless a distinct move in the direction of a modern attitude on the matter; for if sex life is ethical apart from propagation, then insistence on natural as distinguished from other scientific methods is an untenable position and will undoubtedly be abandoned in favor of techniques that offer greater safety than can the "safe period."

"The major cultural, ethical and religious significance of birth control is that it puts the realm of sex on the side of intelligence, control and human satisfactions. The basic importance of birth control is not primarily in its emphasis on the small family system ... but in its principle of intelligent control of life processes ... And perhaps most important of all, the mind of the public must be so educated that sex and all that pertains thereto can be thought and spoken of with the frankness that now prevails in the fields of dietetics and esthetics, or of ethics and religion."

Rev. Curtis W. Reese, Dean of the Abraham Lincoln Center, in a speech on the church and birth control. Birth Control Review, Volume II, Number 5 (New Series, February 1935), pages 2 and 3.


"Population pressure is always a major cause of war ... Birth control is an intelligent, adaptive response to population pressure."

Raymond Pearl, Ph.D., Johns Hopkins University, quoted in the Birth Control Review, Volume III, Number 3 (New Series, November 1935), page 1.


1938

"In countries that have passed the optimum or "right" number of people for the best interests of society, a democratic knowledge of contraception will decrease the population to some extent" ) Guy Irving Burch, Director, Population Reference Bureau. "Birth Control and Living Standards." Birth Control Review, Volume XXII, Number 7 (April 1938), page 81.