Volume 6, No. 2, June, 1918

Page six The Internationalist
Will Birth Control Decrease
NO
Prostitution?
one can give a guaranteed answer to this question.
The evidence is not all in. But judging from the
experience of those countries where birth control information
has been most easily and longest accessible, and
considering some of the most persistent impulses in human
nature, it is a fair prophecy that birth control will substantially
lessen prostitution.
The two sorts of men who mostly patronize prostitutes are
the young men, who cannot afford to marry, and the married
men whose relations with their wives are rendered abnormal
by the fear of unwanted pregnancy. Knowledge of reliable
scientific methods of contraception can hardly fail to lessen
the prostitution evil in both instances.
Nothing in modem civilization is more tragic and more of
an outrage upon nature than that young people of the mating
age should be driven by economic necessity to lead lives that
are either sexually starved or sexually perverted. More
and more young men and women are afraid to marry for
fear they cannot pay the bills of a family.
Can they be blamed? Even before the war, the cost of
living was going up steadily, and the average father of a
family was earning less than $500 per year. Since the war,
the purchasing power of the dollar has dropped to 47c and
the average increase in wages is not more than 20 percent.
In some occupations there has been no increase whatever.
Under such circumstances to deliberately bring little folks
into the world becomes almost criminal. To do it unintentionally
is to be victimized by a cruel situation in which the
parents suffer, the children suffer, and society suffers. But
this is what people face, who marry without knowledge of
birth control.
How different is (he case with knowledge? Then the
young folks can naturally marry when they fall in love—say
in their early twenties. They can spend the first few years
getting adjusted to each other while both of them are earning
money. They can hope to tuck away a little safety
bank account for the babies, and then—say in their late
twenties or early thirties—they can let the babies come,
knowing that they will be welcomed, and will be fairly secured
from want.
Under such circumstances; with mental strain and nervous
apprehension reduced to the minimum, well-mated young
married people are free to develop a secure companionship
that not only provides a splendid foundation for the family,
but it serves as the best possible preventive of the abnormal
conditions which lead a man to patronize a prostitute.
It is a fair conclusion also that birth control information
will go a long way toward stabilizing marriage itself as well
as diminishing prostitution. The fear of unwished pregnancy
is doubtless one of the largest factors in killing love.
Many a couple who have lived through tragedy and separation,
would today be together and happy if only they
had known enough to "space" their babies as they wanted
them, and had been spared that nerve-racking constant terror
of discovering that another unwanted baby was coming.
There are relatively few men who prefer prostitution to
natural mating. It is a perversion which is acquired largely
because of unjust economic conditions and ignorance of how
to make and keep love relations free from disastrous comply
cations. Birth Control is not a cure-all for every human woe,
but it is a help that can hardly be overestimated in view
of the suffering which the lack of it entails. And when the
country once rescues the subject ,from the shocking legal
connection it has had with obscenity and immorality in our
out-of-date statutes, which make it a crime to give contraceptive
information, it will be clear that birth control is in
harmony with nature and evolution instead of against it, that
it is biologically sound and socially beneficial.
Nature gave us our brains to use, and we cannot satisfy
our hunger or our need for clothes or for shelter without
using our brains. It is equally true that we cannot satisfy
our sex impulses successfully without the use of our brains.
Unaided nature is cruel if we do not intelligently co-operate
and control and conquer.
—MARY WARE DENNETT.
THIS
Is Birth Control Dangerous to
QUESTION is
Women's Health?
often asked and the answer is—NO!
The beginning of any new life consists of the conjunction
of the male and female germ. There really
need be no mystery about it for nature follows pretty much
the same rule throughout all her kingdoms. Go to the
flowers.
Suppose we take a peep into Luther Burbank's garden and
we shall probably find that several flowers are covered with
white gauze. This is done to control the fertilization of the
plant—to prevent conception taking place, except when the
gardener wishes it. The flower is the sex organ of the plant.
And now it is in order to ask, does this control injure the
plaint? Any gardener who knows his business will smile
and say, no. It is through this means that the human mind
is able to improve the flower or rather the plant, or better
still, the species.
But supposing this was a great secret and an ignorant
bungler came along and used a red or a black cover instead
of the white or sprayed it with poisonous substance, most
assuredly it would injure the flower. There is a right way
and a wrong way of doing everything. There is no doubt
that thousands of ignorant, ill-informed people injure themselves
because no clean hygienic means of birth control is
allowed to be taught. It is just exactly this that the birth
control movement came into the field to do away with. Most
ill-informed people firmly believe that birth control consists
of abortion or the taking of poisonous medicine, and that
fakers and grafters of all kinds flourish on this ignorance.
Also the medical profession flourishes on this ignorance. But,
of course, far be it from me, a mere lay member, to accuse
that honorable body of wanting to keep the general mass of
people in ignorance on this matter, for any economic reason
or professional interest. However, the family with a fairly
well-filled purse never had any trouble in getting this information
from the family physician, while the poor mother
and father get nothing as a rule except a professional smile
or a benevolent shake of the honorable head.
"The information of birth control would ruin all our young
girls," asserted a benevolent doctor. "But, dear sir," I protested,
"who says we are in the field to teach young girls
birth control? Besides, if the human race has produced
nothing but a tribe of potential mothers who are as irresponsible
as animals, we may as well call it off and confess
that human evolution is a huge failure."
The fact of the matter is that the majority of normal boys
and girls would have a very high ideal of parenthood and
personal purity provided they were taught as much cold facts
about their sex function as they are taught about the function
(Continued on Page 35)