Neo-Malthusian leaders give six reasons to justify the doctrine. I will give as briefly as possible an argument or two under each heading, relying chiefly upon quotations from eminent authorities.
1. The Health of Mother and Child
Many people should remain childless because of hereditary predisposition to disease or abnormality. Healthy mothers should space their children properly for their own good and that of their offspring. On this point we may listen to Dr. W. A. Pusey, President of the American Medical Association: "It is women that bear the penalties in injury, disease, and death, and mental torture that are involved in unlimited child-bearing. They have a right to know how they can intelligently,--not crudely and dangerously,--control their sexual lives. And they are justified by the highest considerations in fighting vigorously and persistently until they have this right granted to them."
2. The Happiness of Married Life
It is said that birth control will bring peace, harmony, and love to the home by freeing parents from the haunting fear of having children which they are unprepared for physically and economically. By encouraging early marriage, it will lessen prostitution and promote morality.
3. The Relief of Overpopulation
"It is certain," says Dr. O. E. Baker, the distinguished economist of the United States Department of Agriculture, "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 from other lands,--which will need their 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, but also throughout the world. Whether this stationary state will be one of misery for the majority of the people, is in China and India to day, or one of well-being and happiness, will depend largely upon voluntary restriction of population."
4. The Improvement of the Race
It is quite the fashion for ignoramuses to make fun of eugenics. Unfortunately their witty observations do not change the situation. Feeblemindedness, epilepsy, certain types of insanity and numerous physical abnormalities are hereditary. Every country is afflicted with more than a sufficient percentage of these undesirables. An increasing proportion means racial deterioration. And the birth rate of those of low mentality everywhere is greater than the birth rate of those of high mentality.
5. The Prevention of Poverty
The Marxian remedy for poverty is a more equable distribution of the world's goods. But, the Neo-Malthusian replies, the least capable have the largest families. It is practicable, or even desirable, that under these conditions the capable should be penalized to support them? Let us give them measures by which they themselves can tend to relieve their poverty. The experience of our clinics shows that this is possible even with high grade morons. The feebleminded of lower grades we must care for; but let us see that as few as possible of such incompetents are born. They are expensive. Let us try to cut down this expenditure and use the money to promote advisable economic reforms.
6. The Progress of Civilization
The means used by uncivilized peoples to relieve overpopulation,--the natural means, one might say,--are abortion, infanticide, war, starvation, disease. They are not due solely to overpopulation and cannot be wholly abolished by birth control; but overpopulation is their chief cause, and birth control will do more toward eliminating them than any other one thing.
These arguments, brief as they are, ought, it seems to me, to show that conscious regulation of the birth rate is a highly ethical proposal. I shall say no more. If civilization advances, it will come. The forces on the other side are the forces of ignorance, prejudice, and superstition. They are the same forces that caused the poor savage of the Polynesian wilds to die of fright because he ate the king's food unwittingly. Are we to be ruled forever by tabu