If such a criminal is a woman, she should be offered the alternative of surgical sterility or incarceration during the child bearing period of her life; if a man, his wife should be offered this remedy against the procreation of criminals in exchange for her husband, on the expiry of his sentence, or the protection of divorce.
No woman in the child-bearing period of life should be released from an Asylum, until this operation has been performed. If a man is committed, his wife should have the option of divorce or be sterilized before his release.
A central Board should issue marriage certificates, after consideration of confidential medical reports upon the health, physical condition, and family history of the parties to a proposed marriage contract.
Medical officers should be appointed in the various centres of population by the central Board, and fees on reports should be paid after the manner of Life Insurance fees.
In fact the Life Insurance system would serve as a good model, for the establishment of a system of marriage control, and if questions involving a more detailed family history were added to a typical Life Insurance report form, it could hardly be improved upon, for the purpose of marriage health reports.
If upon consideration of the medical report of the contracting parties, in accordance with the law upon the subject, a certificate of marriage were refused, a certificate of sterilization by tubo-ligature, forwarded to the Board by a Surgeon, should ent.i.tle to the marriage certificate.
No law should attempt to step in between two lovers, who have become attached to each other by the bonds of a strong affection, lest a greater evil befall both themselves and society.
A marriage certificate of health should state the complete family history as well as the physical condition of the parties to a proposed marriage, and such certificates should be issued only by the Central Board of Experts, who would receive the medical reports of its own medical officers.
When the principle of artificial sterilization is accepted by the State, the organization necessary to ensure that only the fit shall procreate, will only be a matter of arrangement by experts.
One danger looms ahead however if the operative means of producing artificial sterility are popularised.
Every surgeon of experience knows how readily large numbers of married women encourage surgical treatment for ovarian and even uterine complaints, if they become aware that such treatment is followed by sterility. It is not at all an uncommon thing for women in all ranks of life, to encourage, and even seek removal of the ovaries in order to escape an increase in the family.
They become acquainted with persons who have submitted to this operation for ovarian disease, and noting nothing but improvement in their health, attended by sterility, their intense anxiety to enjoy immunity from child-bearing makes them eager to submit to operation.
It would be distinctly immoral to sterilize healthy women, who become possessed with the old Roman pa.s.sion for a childless life, or who simply wish to limit their families for any selfish or personal reason.
Any law which recognizes the induction of artificial sterility should make operative interference with those fit to procreate a healthy stock an offence.
Induced sterility should rank with induced abortion, and be a criminal offence, except in certain cases which could be defined.
There is much evidence to suggest that artificial sterilization may become as a great vice, as great a danger to the State as criminal abortion.
Artificial abortion, as commonly performed, is a much more dangerous operation than tubo-ligature. Of the two operations, any experienced surgeon would readily declare that the latter is the simpler and the safer; the one less likely to lead to unfavourable complications, and the one, moreover, that would leave the subject of it with the better "expectancy of life."
Anaesthetics and antiseptics have made this comparison possible and true.
Any surgeon who performs tubo-ligature should be liable to prosecution, unless he can justify his action according to the law relating to the artificial sterility of the unfit.
While the law would eventually require to be obligatory, with regard to the absolutely unfit, it would require to be permissive in all other cases.
Many voluntarily abstain from marriage, because of a strong hereditary tendency to certain diseases such as cancer and tubercle.
There must of necessity be many on the border-land between the fit and the unfit, and clauses permitting sterilization under some circ.u.mstances would be required.
CONCLUSION.
In conclusion let us briefly review the whole position taken up in this imperfect study of a great question.
1. The birth-rate is rapidly and persistently declining.
2. The food-rate is persistently increasing.
3. The declining fertility is not uniform through all cla.s.ses.
4. The fertility of the best is rapidly declining.
5. The fertility of the worst is undisturbed.
6. The policy of the State is inimical to the fertility of its best, and fosters the fertility of its worst citizens.
7. The infertility of the best stock is due to voluntary curtailment of the family, through s.e.xual self-restraint.
8. No such-factor does or can obtain as a check to the fertility of the unfit.
9. The proportion of the unfit to the fit is in consequence annually increasing.
10. The _future_ of society demands that compulsory sterilization of the unfit should be adopted.
11. No method ever tried or suggested offers the advantages of simplicity, safety, effectiveness, and popularity, promised by tubo-ligature.
12. The State must protect itself against the collateral danger of artificial sterilization of its best stock.
The highest interest of Society and of the individual urgently requires that the size of families be controlled.
The moral restraint of Malthus (delayed marriage) and post-nuptial intermittent restraint are the only safe and rational methods, that our civilization can possibly encourage, or physiology endorse.
These methods must of necessity be peculiar to the best cla.s.s of people.
For the worst cla.s.s of people, induced sterility, or prohibited fertility, is an absolute necessity, if Society and civilization must endure.
Now what are likely to be the results of, first, the moral methods, and, second, the surgical method of our curtailment.
"It does not appear to me," says Dr. Billings (Forum, June, 1893), "that this lessening of the birth-rate is in itself an evil, or that it will be worth while to attempt to increase the birth-rate merely for the sake of maintaining a constant increase in the population, because to neither this nor the next generation will such increase be specially beneficial."
To Aristotle, the great advantage of an abundant population was, that the State was secured against invasion by numerous defenders.
If we can find no stronger justification for a teeming population than this to-day, we will be forced to agree with Dr. Billings, that neither to this nor the next generation, is a great increase especially beneficial.
But the moral effect of judicial limitation is very great. If men and women can marry young, one great incentive to vice is removed. If married people can bear their children when they can best support them, they will marry when their bodies are matured, and bear their families when their finances are matured.
For children well provided for, and educated, and born after full physical and mental maturity in their parents, turn out the best men and women.
If the conditions of life are made easy, if ease and comfort are tolerably secured to all, if the strain and stress of life are reduced, if hardship, poverty, and want are reduced to a minimum, the s.e.xual instinct and parental love in human nature, so far unimpaired by any known force, are powerful enough to keep the race alive, and insure a progressive development.
The greater the proportion and the fertility of the defective, the less hope for the future. If the fertility of the unfit be reduced to a minimum, not only will many dreadful hereditary diseases be eradicated, but the fertility of the fit will receive a powerful stimulus, because of the great diminution there will necessarily be in the burdens they will have to bear.