Birth Control
The Biblical account of how Jehovah slew Onan for disobeying his father's commandment to go to his brother's widow, Tamar, and "perform the duty of an husband's brother," shows that the deliberate prevention of conception is not a new discovery.
Mr. Harold Cox must be right when he says "it is fairly certain that in all ages and in all countries men and women have practiced various devices to prevent conception while continuing to indulge in sexual intercourse." For while I know of no positive evidence to support this, it appears to be self-evident that the human race within historical times has not multiplied up to the limits of human fecundity. Since it is hardly probable that this has been due to the continence of husbands, nor wholly to infanticide, abortion, infant mortality, and postponement of marriage, it is safe to conclude that birth control is an ancient practice.
Nevertheless, it was not until the Nineteenth Century that the practice of contraception began to be publicly advocated on grounds of public policy. Until the industrial age the weight of opinion was overwhelmingly in favor of very large families. Kings and nobles needed soldiers and retainers: "As arrows in the hand of a mighty man, so are the children of youth. Happy is the man that hath his quiver full of them. They shall not be ashamed, but they shall speak with the enemies in the gate." Fathers of families desired many sons. The early factory owners could use abundant cheap labor. There had been men from Plato's time who had their doubts about the value of an indefinitely growing population. But the substantial opinion down to the end of the Eighteenth Century was Adam Smith's that: "the most decisive mark of the prosperity of any country is the increase of the number of its inhabitants."
Apparently it was the sinister character of the early factory system, and the ominous unrest which pervaded Europe after the French Revolution, which rather suddenly changed into pessimism this bland optimism about an evergrowing population. Malthus published the first edition of his Essay on Population in 1798. This book is undoubtedly one of the great landmarks of human culture, for it focussed the attention of Europe on the necessity of regulating the growth of population. Malthus himself, it seems, hoped that this regulation could be achieved by the postponement of marriage and by continence. It is not clear whether he disapproved of what is now called neo-Malthusianism, or whether he did not regard it as practicable, Nevertheless, within less than twenty-five years James Mill in the Encyclopædia Britannica had in guarded fashion put forward the neo-Malthusian principle, and shortly thereafter, that is in 1823, an active public propaganda was set on foot, most probably by Francis Place, by means of what were known as the "diabolical handbills." These leaflets were addressed to the working classes and contained descriptions of methods for preventing conception. Some of them were sent to a good lady named Mrs. Fildes, who indignantly, but mistakenly from her point of view, assisted the nefarious propaganda by exposing it in the public prints. Fifty years later Mr. Bradlaugh and Mrs. Besant had themselves indicted and tried for selling an illustrated edition of Knowlton's Fruits of Philosophy. After that advertisement, neo-Malthusian principles and practices were known and were, therefore, available to all but the poorest and most illiterate.
No propaganda so threatening to the established moral order ever encountered such an ineffective opposition. I do not know how much money has been spent on the propaganda nor how many martyrs have had to coerce reluctant judges to try them. But it is evident that once it was known that fairly dependable methods of contraception exist, the people took the matter into their own hands. For the public reasons by which neo-Malthusianism was justified were also private reasons. The social philosopher said that population must be adjusted to the means of subsistence. Man and wife said that they must have only as many children as they could afford to rear. The eugenist said that certain stocks ought not to multiply. Individual women decided 'that too many children, or even any children, were bad for their health. But these were not the only reasons which explain the demand for neo-Malthusian knowledge. There was also the very plain demand due to a desire to enjoy sexual intercourse without social consequences.
On this aspect of birth control the liberal reformers have, I think, been until recently more than a little disingenuous. They have been arguing for the removal of the prohibitory laws, and they have built their case on two main theses. They have argued, first, that the limitation of births was sound public policy for economic and eugenic reasons; and second, that it was necessary to the happiness of families, the health of mothers, and the welfare of children. All these reasons may be unimpeachable. I think they are. But it was idle to pretend that the dissemination of this knowledge, even if legally confined to the instruction of married women by licensed physicians, could be kept from the rest of the adult population. Obviously that which all married couples are permitted to know every one is bound to know. Human curiosity will make that certain. Now this is what the Christian churches, especially the Roman Catholic, which oppose contraception on principle, instantly recognized. They were quite right. They were quite right, too, in recognizing that whether or not birth control is eugenic, hygienic, and economic, it is the most revolutionary practice in the history of sexual morals.
For when conception could be prevented, there was an end to the theory that woman submits to the embrace of the male only for purposes of procreation. She had to be persuaded to co-operate, and no possible reason could be advanced except that the pleasure was reciprocal. She had to understand and inwardly assent to the principle that it is proper to have sexual intercourse with her husband and to prevent conception. She had, therefore, to give up the whole traditional theory which she may have only half-believed anyway, that sexual intercourse was an impure means to a noble end. She could no longer believe that procreation alone mitigated the vileness of cohabiting with a man, and so she had to change her valuation and accept it as inherently delightful. Thus by an inevitable process the practice of contraception led husbands and wives to the conviction that they need not be in the least ashamed of their desires for each other.
But this transvaluation of values within the sanctity of the marital chamber could hardly be kept a secret. What had happened was that married couples were indulging in the pleasures of sex because they had learned how to isolate them from the responsibilities of parenthood. When we talk about the unconventional theories of the younger generation we might in all honesty take this fact into account. They have had it demonstrated to them by their own parents, by those in whom the administering of the conventions is vested, that under certain circumstances it is legitimate and proper to gratify sexual desire apart from any obligation to the family or to the race. They have been taught that it is possible to do this, and that it may be proper. Therefore, the older generation could no longer argue that sexual intercourse as such was evil. It could no longer argue that it was obviously dangerous. It could only maintain that the psychological consequences are serious if sexual gratification is not made incidental to the enduring partnership of marriage and a home. That may be, in fact, I think it can be shown to be, the real wisdom of the matter. Yet if it is the wisdom of the matter, it is a kind of wisdom which men and women can acquire by experience alone. They do not have it instinctively. They cannot be compelled to adopt it. They can only learn to believe it.
That is a very different thing from submitting to a convention upheld by all human and divine authority.