Woman and the New Race by Margaret Sanger

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Such continence as is involved in dependence upon the so-called "safe
period" for family limitation will harm no one. The difficulty here is
that the method is not practical. It simply does not work. The woman
who employs this method finds herself in the same predicament as the
one who believes that she is not in danger of pregnancy when she does
not respond passionately to her husband. That this woman is more
likely to conceive than the emotional one, is a well-known fact. The
woman who refuses to use contraceptives, but who rejects sex
expression except for a few days in the month, is likely to learn too
soon the fallacy of her theory as a birth-control method.

For a long time the "safe period" was suggested by physicians. It was
also the one method of birth control countenanced by the
ecclesiastics. Women are learning from experience and specialists are
discovering by investigation that the "safe period" is anything but
safe for all women. Some women are never free from the possibility of
conception from puberty to the menopause. Others seemingly have "safe
periods" for a time, only to become pregnant when they have begun to
feel secure in their theory. Here again, continence must give way, as
a method of birth control, to contraceptives.

In the same category as the "safe period," as a method of birth
control, must be placed so-called "male continence." The same practice
is also variously known as "Karezza," "Sedular Absorption" and
"Zugassent's Discovery." Those who regard it as a method of family
limitation are likely to find themselves disappointed.

As a form of continence, however, if it can be called continence, it
is asserted to bring none of the long course of evils which too often
follow the practice of lifelong abstinence, or abstinence broken only
when a child is desired.

Its devotees testify that they avoid ill effects and achieve the
highest possible results. These results are due, probably, to two
factors.

First, those who practice Karezza are usually of a high mental and
spiritual development and are, therefore, capable of an exalted degree
of self-control without actual repression. Second, they have the
benefit of that magnetic interchange between man and woman which makes
for physical, mental and spiritual wellbeing. This stimulation becomes
destructive irritation in ordinary forms of continence.

The Oneida Community, a religious group comprising about 130 men and
150 women, which occupied a part of an old Indian reservation in the
state of New York, were the chief exponents of "male continence." The
practice was a religious requirement with them and they laid great
stress upon three different functions which they attributed to the
sexual organs. They held that these functions were urinary,
reproductive and amative, each separate and distinct in its use from
the others. Cases are cited in which both men and women are said to
have preserved their youth and their sexual powers to a ripe old age,
and to have prolonged their honeymoons throughout married life. The
theory, however, interesting as it may be when considered as
"continence," is not to be relied upon as a method of birth control.

Summing it all up, then, continence may meet the needs of a few
natures, but it does not meet the needs of the masses. To enforce
continence upon those whose natures do not demand it, is an injustice,
the cruelty and the danger of which has been underestimated rather
than exaggerated. It matters not whether this wrong is committed by
the church, through some outworn dogma; by the state, through the laws
prohibiting contraceptives, or by society, through the conditions
which prevent marriage when young men and women reach the age at which
they have need of marriage.

The world has been governed too long by repression. The more
fundamental the force that is repressed the more destructive its
action. The disastrous effects of repressing the sex force are written
plainly in the health rates, the mortality statistics, the records of
crime and the entry books of the hospitals for the insane. Yet this is
not all the tale, for there are still the little understood hosts of
sexually abnormal people and the monotonous misery of millions who do
not die early nor end violently, but who are, nevertheless, devoid of
the joys of a natural love life.

As a means of birth control, continence is as impracticable for most
people as it is undesirable. Celibate women doubtless have their place
in the regeneration of the world, but it is not they, after all, who
will, through experience and understanding recreate it. It is mainly
through fullness of expression and experience in life that the mass of
women, having attained freedom, will accomplish this unparalleled
task.

The need of women's lives is not repression, but the greatest possible
expression and fulfillment of their desires upon the highest possible
plane. They cannot reach higher planes through ignorance and
compulsion. They can attain them only through knowledge and the
cultivation of a higher, happier attitude toward sex. Sex life must be
stripped of its fear. This is one of the great functions of
contraceptives. That which is enshrouded in fear becomes morbid. That
which is morbid cannot be really beautiful.

A true understanding of every phase of the love life, and such an
understanding alone, can reveal it in its purity--in its power of
upliftment. Force and fear have failed from the beginning of time.
Their fruits are wrecks and wretchedness. Knowledge and freedom to
choose or reject the sexual embrace, according as it is lovely or
unlovely, and these alone, can solve the problem. These alone make
possible between man and woman that indissoluble tie and mutual
passion, and common understanding, in which lies the hope of a higher
race.

CHAPTER X

CONTRACEPTIVES OR ABORTION?

Society has not yet learned the significance of the age-long effort of
the feminine spirit to free itself of the burden of excessive
childbearing. It has been singularly blind to the real forces
underlying the cause of infanticide, child abandonment and abortion.
It has permitted the highest and most powerful thing in woman's nature
to be hindered, diverted, repressed and confused. Society has
permitted this inner urge of woman to be rendered violent by
repression until it has expressed itself in cruel forms of family
limitation, which this same society has promptly labeled "crimes" and
sought to punish. It has gone on blindly forcing women into these
"crimes," deaf alike to their entreaties and to the lessons of
history.

As we have seen in the second chapter of this book, child abandonment
and infanticide are by no means obsolete practices. As for abortion,
it has not decreased but increased with the advance of civilization.
The reader will recall that one authority says that there are
1,000,000 abortions in the United States every year, while another
estimates double that number.

Most of the women of the middle and upper classes in America seem
secure in their knowledge of contraceptives as a means of birth
control. Under present conditions, when the laws in most states regard
this knowledge, howsoever it be imparted, as illicit, and the federal
statutes prohibit the sending of it through the mails, even the women
in more fortunate circumstances sometimes have difficulty in getting
scientific information. Nevertheless, so strong is their purpose that
they do obtain it and use it, correctly or incorrectly.

The great majority of women, however, belong to the working class.
Nearly all of these women will fall into one of two general groups--the
ones who are having children against their wills, and those who,
to escape this evil, find refuge in abortion. Being given their choice
by society--to continue to be overburdened mothers or to submit to a
humiliating, repulsive, painful and too often gravely dangerous
operation, those women in whom the feminine urge to freedom is
strongest choose the abortionist. One group goes on bringing children
to birth, hoping that they will be born dead or die. The women of the
other group strive consciously by drastic means to protect themselves
and the children already born.

"Our examinations," says Dr. Max Hirsch, an authority on the subject,
"have informed us that the largest number of abortions (in the United
States) are performed on married women. This fact brings us to the
conclusion that contraceptive measures among the upper classes and the
practice of abortion among the lower class, are the real means
employed to regulate the number of offspring."

Thus a high percentage of women in comfortable circumstances escape
overbreeding by the use of contraceptives. A similarly high percentage
of women not in comfortable circumstances are forced to submit to
forced maternity, because their only alternative at present is
abortion. When accidental conception takes place, some women of both
classes resort to abortion if they can obtain the services of an
abortionist.

When society holds up its hands in horror at the "crime" of abortion,
it forgets at whose door the first and principal responsibility for
this practice rests. Does anyone imagine that a woman would submit to
abortion if not denied the knowledge of scientific, effective
contraceptives? Does anyone believe that physicians and midwives who
perform abortions go from door to door soliciting patronage? The
abortionist could not continue his practice for twenty-four hours if
it were not for the fact that women come desperately begging for such
operations. He could not stay out of jail a day if women did not so
generally approve of his services as to hold his identity an open but
seldom-betrayed secret.

The question, then, is not whether family limitation should be
practiced. It _is_ being practiced; it has been practiced for ages and
it will always be practiced. The question that society must answer is
this: Shall family limitation be achieved through birth control or
abortion? Shall normal, safe, effective contraceptives be employed, or
shall we continue to force women to the abnormal, often dangerous
surgical operation?

This question, too, the church, the state and the moralist must
answer. The knowledge of contraceptive methods may yet for a time be
denied to the woman of the working class, but those who are
responsible for denying it to her, and she herself, should understand
clearly the dangers to which she is exposed because of the laws which
force her into the hands of the abortionist.

To understand the more clearly the difference between birth control by
contraceptives and family limitation through abortion it is necessary
to know something of the processes of conception. Knowledge of these
processes will also enable us to comprehend more thoroughly the
dangers to which woman is exposed by our antiquated laws, and how much
better it would be for her to employ such preventive measures as would
keep her out of the hands of the abortionist, into which the laws now
drive her.

In every woman's ovaries are imbedded millions of ovules or eggs. They
are in every female at birth, and as the girl develops into womanhood,
these ovules develop also. At a certain age, varying slightly with the
individual, the ripest ovule leaves the nest or ovary and comes down
one of the tubes connecting with the womb and passes out of the body.
When this takes place, it is said that the girl is at the age of
puberty. When it reaches the womb the ovule is ready for the process
of conception--that is, fertilization by the male sperm.

At the time the ovule is ripening, the womb is preparing to receive
it. This preparation consists of a reinforced blood supply brought to
its lining. If fertilization takes place, the fertilized ovule or ovum
will cling to the lining of the womb and there gather its nourishment.
If fertilization does not take place, the ovum passes out of the body
and the uterus throws off its surplus blood supply. This is called the
menstrual period. It occurs about once a month or every twenty-eight
days.

In the male organs there are glands called testes. They secrete a
fluid called the semen. In the semen is the life-giving principle
called the sperm.

When intercourse takes place, if no preventive is employed, the semen
is deposited in the woman's vagina. The ovule is not in the vagina,
but is in the womb, farther up, or perhaps in the tube on its way to
the womb. As steel is attracted to the magnet, the sperm of the male
starts on its way to seek the ovum. Several of these sperm cells
start, but only one enters the ovum and is absorbed into it. This
process is called fertilization, conception or impregnation.

If no children are desired, the meeting of the male sperm and the ovum
must be prevented. When scientific means are employed to prevent this
meeting, one is said to practice birth control. The means used is
known as a contraceptive.

If, however, a contraceptive is not used and the sperm meets the ovule
and development begins, any attempt at removing it or stopping its
further growth is called abortion.

There is no doubt that women are apt to look upon abortion as of
little consequence and to treat it accordingly. An abortion is as
important a matter as a confinement and requires as much attention as
the birth of a child at its full term.

"The immediate dangers of abortion," says Dr. J. Clifton Edgar, in his
book, "_The Practice of Obstetrics_," "are hemorrhage, retention of an
adherent placenta, sepsis, tetanus, perforation of the uterus. They
also cause sterility, anemia, malignant diseases, displacements,
neurosis, and endometritis."

In plain, everyday language, in an abortion there is always a very
serious risk to the health and often to the life of the patient.

It is only the women of wealth who can afford the best medical skill,
care and treatment both at the time of the operation and afterwards.
In this way they escape the usual serious consequences.

The women whose incomes are limited and who must continue at work
before they have recovered from the effects of an abortion are the
great army of sufferers. It is among such that the deaths due to
abortion usually ensue. It is these, too, who are most often forced to
resort to such operations.

If death does not result, the woman who has undergone an abortion is
not altogether safe from harm. The womb may not return to its natural
size, but remain large and heavy, tending to fall away from its
natural position. Abortion often leaves the uterus in a condition to
conceive easily again and unless prevention is strictly followed
another pregnancy will surely occur. Frequent abortions tend to cause
barrenness and serious, painful pelvic ailments. These and other
conditions arising from such operations are very likely to ruin a
woman's general health.

While there are cases where even the law recognizes an abortion as
justifiable if recommended by a physician, I assert that the hundreds
of thousands of abortions performed in America each year are a
disgrace to civilization.

The effects of such operations upon a woman, serious as they may be,
are nothing as compared to the injury done her general health by drugs
taken to produce the same result. Even such drugs as are prescribed by
physicians have harmful effects, and nostrums recommended by druggists
are often worse still.

Even more drastic may be the effect upon the unborn child, for many
women fill their systems with poisonous drugs during the first weeks
of their pregnancy, only to decide at last, when drugs have failed, as
they usually do, to bring the child to birth.

There are no statistics, of course, by which we may compute the amount
of suffering to mother and child from the use of such drugs, but we
know that the total of physical weakness and disease must be
astounding. We know that the woman's own system feels the strain of
these drugs and that the embryo is usually poisoned by them. The child
is likely to be rickety, have heart trouble, kidney disorder, or to be
generally weak in its powers of resistance. If it does not die before
it reaches its first year, it is probable that it will have to
struggle against some of these weaknesses until its adolescent period.

It needs no assertion of mine to call attention to the grim fact that
the laws prohibiting the imparting of information concerning the
preventing of conception are responsible for tens of thousands of
deaths each year in this country and an untold amount of sickness and
sorrow. The suffering and the death of these women is squarely upon
the heads of the lawmakers and the puritanical, masculine-minded
person who insist upon retaining the abominable legal restrictions.

Try as they will they cannot escape the truth, nor hide it under the
cloak of stupid hypocrisy. If the laws against imparting knowledge of
scientific birth control were repealed, nearly all of the 1,000,000 or
2,000,000 women who undergo abortions in the United States each year
would escape the agony of the surgeon's instruments and the long trail
of disease, suffering and death which so often follows.

"He who would combat abortion," says Dr. Hirsch, "and at the same time
combat contraceptive measures may be likened to the person who would
fight contagious diseases and forbid disinfection. For contraceptive
measures are important weapons in the fight against abortion.

"America has a law since 1873 which prohibits by criminal statute the
distribution and regulation of contraceptive measures. It follows,
therefore, that America stands at the head of all nations in the huge
number of abortions."

There is the case in a nutshell. Family limitation will always be
practiced as it is now being practiced--either by birth control or by
abortion. We know that. The one means health and happiness--a
stronger, better race. The other means disease, suffering, death.

The woman who goes to the abortionist's table is not a criminal but a
martyr--a martyr to the bitter, unthinkable conditions brought about
by the blindness of society at large. These conditions give her the
choice between the surgeon's instruments and the sacrificing of what
is highest and holiest in her--her aspiration to freedom, her desire
to protect the children already hers. These conditions--not the
woman--outface society with this question:

"Contraceptives or Abortion--which shall it be?"

CHAPTER XI

ARE PREVENTIVE MEANS CERTAIN?

There are several means of preventing conception which are both
certain and harmless. What those means are the state laws forbid me to
say. If I should defy the state laws and name those contraceptives,
the federal laws would forbid this book's going through the mails. Nor
can I, without coming into conflict with the laws, tell _why_ these
means are reliable. It is difficult to discuss the subject without
using franker language than the statutes permit, and I do not wish to
violate the law in this particular book.

"Can I rely upon this? Is it certain? Will it prevent absolutely?"
Such questions, always asked by women who seek advice concerning
contraceptives, testify both to their fear of involuntary motherhood
and their doubt as to any and all means offered for their deliverance.

Doubt as to the certainty of contraceptives arises from two sources.
One is the uninformed element in the medical profession. A physician
who belongs to this element may object to birth control upon general
grounds, or he may repeat old-fashioned objections to cover his
ignorance of contraceptives. For, strange as it may seem, there is an
amazing ignorance among physicians of this supremely important
subject. The uninformed objector often assumes to speak with the voice
of authority, asserting that there are no thoroughly dependable
contraceptives that are not injurious to the user.

The other source of distrust is the experience of the woman herself.
Having no place to go for scientific advice, she gathers her
information from neighbors and friends. One offers this suggestion,
another offers that, each urging the means that she has found
successful and condemning others. All this is very confusing and
extremely disturbing to the woman who, for one reason or another, is
living in constant fear of pregnancy.

It is not at all surprising that such a state of affairs exists. There
has been so much secrecy about the whole subject and so much
dependence upon amateurish and nonprofessional advice that it is
almost impossible for anyone to procure reliable information or to
recognize it when given. This is especially true in the United States
where there are both federal and state laws to punish those who
disseminate knowledge of birth-control methods.

Even under present conditions, however, there is a certain amount of
reliable information concerning methods of birth control. We know that
there are several methods of prevention which are not only dependable,
but which can be used without injury either to the man or the woman.
Knowledge of what these methods are and how to apply them should be
available to every married man and woman. It is safe to predict that
in a very few years they will be available.

Some methods are more dependable than others, just as there are some
more simple of adjustment than others. Some are cheap and less
durable; others are expensive and last for years. There are some which
for a quarter of a century have stood the test of certainty in
Holland, France, England and the United States among the wealthier
classes, as the falling birth rate among these classes indicates. And
just as the reliable, primitive wheelbarrow is antiquated beside the
latest airplane, so, as scientific investigators turn their attention
more and more to this field, will the awkward, troublesome methods of
the past give way to the simpler, more convenient methods of the
morrow.

Although the law forbids information concerning reliable means of
contraception, it is hardly likely that it can be invoked to prevent
warnings against widely practiced methods which are NOT reliable. The
employment of such methods leads not only to disappointment but often
to ill health.

One of the most common practices of this kind is that of nursing one
baby too long in the hope of preventing the birth of the next. The
"poor whites" of the South and many of the foreign-born women of the
United States pin their hopes to this method. Often they persist in
nursing a child until it is eighteen months old--almost always until
they become pregnant again.

Prolonged nursing hurts both child and mother, it is said. In the
child it causes a tendency to brain disease, probably through
disordered digestion and nutrition. In the mother it causes a strong
tendency to deafness and blindness. If a child is nursed after it is
twelve months old, it is generally pale, flabby and unhealthy, often
rickety, one authority points out, while the mother is usually
nervous, emaciated and hysterical. If pregnancy occurs under these
conditions, the mother not only injures her own health but that of the
next child, often developing in it a weakness of constitution which it
never overcomes.

Moreover, prolonged nursing has been found to be unreliable as a
contraceptive. We know this upon good authority. It should not be
depended upon at all.

In the same class is the so-called "safe period" referred to in
another chapter. For many women there is never any "safe period."
Others have "safe periods" for a number of years, only to find
themselves pregnant because these periods have ceased without warning.

One of the most frequent of all the mistakes made in recommending
contraceptives is the advice to use an antiseptic or cold-water
douche. This error seems to be surprisingly persistent. I am
particularly surprised to hear from women that such douches have been
prescribed by physicians. Any physician who knows the first rudiments
of physiology and anatomy must also know that necessary and important
as an antiseptic douche is as a cleanser and hygienic measure, it is
assuredly not to be advised as a means of preventing conception.

A woman may, and often does, become pregnant before she can make use
of a douche. This is particularly likely to happen if her uterus is
low. And the woman who does much walking, who stands for long hours or
who uses the sewing machine a great deal is likely to have a low
uterus. It is then much easier for the spermatazoa to enter almost
directly into the womb than it would otherwise be, and the douche, no
matter how soon it is used, is likely to be ineffective. The tendency
of the uterus to drop under strain goes far to explain why some women
who have depended upon the douche for years suddenly find themselves
pregnant. Do not depend upon the douche. As a cleansing agent, it is a
necessary part of every woman's toilet, but it is not a preventive.

Even if the douche were dependable, the absence of sanitary
convenience from households in remote districts and the difficulty of
using a douche in crowded tenements would prevent many women from
making use of it.

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