It is just
the same with a great human device, the introduction of clothes. They
have led to all sorts of new susceptibilities to disease and even
tendencies to direct injury of many kinds. Yet no one advocates the
complete disuse of all clothing on the ground that corsets have
sometimes proved harmful. It would be just as absurd to advocate the
complete abandonment of contraceptives on the ground that some of them
have sometimes been misused. If it were not, indeed, that we are
familiar with the lengths to which ignorance and prejudice may go we
should question the sanity of anyone who put forward so foolish a
proposition. Every great step which Nature and man have taken in the
path of progress has been beset by dangers which are gladly risked
because of the advantages involved. We have still to enumerate some of
the immense advantages which Man has gained in acquiring a conscious
and deliberate control of reproduction.
III.
BIRTH CONTROL IN RELATION TO MORALITY AND EUGENICS
Anyone who has followed this discussion so far will not easily believe
that a tendency so deeply rooted in Nature as Birth Control can ever be
in opposition to Morality. It can only seem to be so when we confuse
the eternal principles of Morality, whatever they may be, with their
temporary applications, which are always becoming modified in
adaptation to changing circumstances.
We are often in danger of doing injustice to the morality of the past,
and it is important, even in order to understand the morality of the
present, that we should be able to put ourselves in the place of those
for whom birth control was immoral.
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