Since then the feeling of the awakened women of America has intensified. The rapidity with which women are going into industry, the increasing hardship and poverty of the lower strata of society, the arousing of public conscience, have all operated to give force and volume to the demand for woman"s right to control her own body that she may work out her own salvation.
Those who believe in strictly legal measures, as well as those who believe both in legal measures and in open defiance of these brutal and unjust laws, are demanding amendments to the obscenity statutes, which shall remove information concerning contraceptives from its present cla.s.sification among things filthy and obscene.
An amendment typical of those offered is that drawn up for the New York statutes under the direction of Samuel McClure Lindsey, of Columbia University. The words and sentences in italics are those which it proposed to add:
"(Section 1145.) Physicians" instruments _and information_. An article or instrument used or applied by physicians lawfully practicing, or by their direction or prescription, for the cure or prevention of disease, is not an article of indecent or immoral nature or use, within this article. The supplying of such articles to such physicians or by their direction or prescription, is not an offense under this article. _The giving by a duly licensed physician or registered nurse lawfully practicing, of information or advice in regard to, or the supplying to any person of any article or medicine for the prevention of, conception is not a violation of any provision of this article._"
This proposed amendment should without doubt include midwives as well as nurses. There are thousands of women who never see a nurse or a physician. Under this section, even as it now stands, physicians have a right to prescribe contraceptives, but few of them have claimed that right or have even known that it has existed. It does exist, however, and was specifically declared by the New York State Court of Appeals, as we shall see when we consider that court"s opinion in the Sanger case, farther on in the book. It can do no harm to make the intent of the law as regards physicians plainer, and it would be an immense step forward to include nurses and midwives in the section. With this addition it would remove one of the most serious obstacles to the freedom and advancement of American womanhood. Every woman interested in the welfare of women in general should make it her business to agitate for such a change in the obscenity laws.
The above provision would take care of the case of the woman who is ill, or who is plainly about to become ill, but it does not take care of the vast body of women who have not yet ruined their health by childbearing and who are not yet suffering from diseases complicated by pregnancy. If this amendment had been attached to the laws in all the states, there would still remain much to be done.
Shall we go on indefinitely driving the now healthy mother of two children into the hands of the abortionist, where she goes in preference to constant ill health, overwork and the witnessing of dying and starving babies? It is each woman"s duty to herself and to society to hasten the repeal of all laws against the communication of birth-control information now that she has the vote, she should use her political influence to strike, first of all, at these restrictive statutes. It is not to her credit that a district attorney, arguing against a birth control advocate, is able to show that women have made no effort to wipe out such laws in states where they have had the ballot for years.
It is time that women a.s.sert themselves upon this fundamental right, and the first and best use they can make of the ballot is in this direction. These laws were made by men and have been instruments of martyrdom and death for unnumbered thousands of women. Women now have the opportunity to sweep them into the trash heap. They will do it at once unless, like men, they use the ballot for those political honors which many years of experience have taught men to be hollow.
It is only a question of how long it will take women to make up their minds to this result. The law of woman"s being is stronger than any statute, and the man-made law must sooner or later give way to it. Man has not protected woman in matters most vital to her--but she is awaking and will sooner or later realize this and a.s.sert herself. If she acts in ma.s.s now, it will be another cheering evidence that she is moving consciously toward her goal.
CHAPTER XVI
WHY NOT BIRTH-CONTROL CLINICS IN AMERICA
[Footnote: This chapter, in substance, and largely in language, appeared under the present t.i.tle in the March, 1920, issue of American Medicine (New York) and is incorporated in this book by courtesy of that publication.]
The absurd cruelty of permitting thousands of women each year to go through abortions to prevent the aggravation of diseases for which they are under treatment a.s.suredly cannot be much longer ignored by the medical profession. Responsibility for the inestimable damage done by the practice of permitting patients suffering from certain ailments to become pregnant, because of their ignorance of contraceptives, when the physician knows that if pregnancy goes to its full term it will hasten the disease and lead to the patient"s death, must in all fairness be laid at his door.
What these diseases are and what dangers are involved in pregnancy are known to every pract.i.tioner of standing. Specialists have not been negligent in pointing out the situation. Eager to enhance or protect their reputations in the profession, they continually call out to one another: "Don"t let the patient bear a child--don"t let pregnancy continue."
The warning has been sounded most often, perhaps, in the cases of tubercular women. "In view of the fact that the tubercular process becomes exacerbated either during pregnancy or after childbirth, most authorities recommend that abortion be induced as a matter of routine in all tubercular women," says Dr. J. Whitridge Williams, obstetrician-in-chief to the Johns Hopkins Hospital, in his treatise on _Obstetrics_. Dr. Thomas Watts Eden, obstetrician and gynecologist to Charing Cross Hospital and member of the staffs of other notable British hospitals, extends but does not complete the list in this paragraph on page 652 of his _Practical Obstetrics_: "Certain of the conditions enumerated form absolute indications for the induction of abortion. These are nephritis, uncompensated valvular lesions of the heart, advanced tuberculosis, insanity, irremediable malignant tumors, hydatidiform mole, uncontrollable uterine hemorrhage, and acute hydramnios."
We know that abortion, when performed by skilled hands, under right conditions, brings almost no danger to the life of the patient, and we also know that particular diseases can be more easily combatted after such an abortion than during a pregnancy allowed to come to full term.
But why not adopt the easier, safer, less repulsive course and prevent conception altogether? Why put these thousands of women who each year undergo such abortions to the pain they entail and in whatever danger attends them?
Why continue to send home women to whom pregnancy is a grave danger with the futile advice: "Now don"t get this way again!" They are sent back to husbands who have generations of pa.s.sion and pa.s.sion"s claim to outlet. They are sent back without being given information as to how to prevent the dangerous pregnancy and are expected, presumably, to depend for their safety upon the husband"s continence. The wife and husband are thrown together to bring about once more the same condition. Back comes the patient again in a few months to be aborted and told once more not to do it again.
Does any physician believe that the picture is overdrawn? I have known of many such cases. A recent one that came under my observation was that of a woman who suffered from a disease of the kidneys. Five times she was taken to a maternity hospital in an ambulance after falling in offices or in the street. One of the foremost gynecologists of America sent her out three times without giving her information as to the contraceptive means which would have prevented a repet.i.tion of this experience.
Why does this situation exist? We do not question the good intent nor the high purposes of these physicians. We know that they observe a high standard of ethics and that they are working for the uplift of the race. But here is a situation that is absurd--hideously absurd.
What is the matter?
Several factors contribute to this state of affairs. First, the subject of contraception has been kept in the dark, even in medical colleges and in hospitals. Abortion has been openly discussed as a necessity under certain conditions, but the subject of contraception, as any physician will admit, has not yet been brought to the front. It has escaped specialized attention in the laboratories and the research departments. Thus there has been no professional stamp of approval by great bodies of experimenters. The result is that the average physician has felt that contraceptive methods are not yet established as certainties and has, for that reason, refused to direct _their use_.
Specialists are so busy with their own particular subjects and general pract.i.tioners are so taken up with their daily routine that they cannot give to the problem of contraception the attention it must have. Consultation rooms in charge of reputable physicians who have specialized in contraception, a.s.sisted by registered nurses--in a word, clinics designed for this specialty, would meet this crying need. Such clinics should deal with each woman individually, taking into account her particular disease, her temperament, her mentality and her condition, both physical and economic. Their sole function should be to prevent pregnancy. In accomplishing this purpose, a higher standard of hygiene is attained. Not only would a burden be removed from the physician who sends a woman to such a clinic, but there would be an improvement in the woman"s general condition which would in a number of ways reflect itself in benefit to her family.
All this for the diseased woman. But every argument that can be made for preventive medicine can be made for birth-control clinics for the use of the woman who has not yet lost her health. Sound and vigorous at the time of her marriage, she could remain so if given advice as to by what means she could s.p.a.ce her children and limit their number.
When she is not given such information, she is plunged blindly into married life and a few years is likely to find her with a large family, herself diseased and damaged, an unfit breeder of the unfit, and still ignorant!
What are the fruits of this woeful ignorance in which women have been kept? First, a tremendous infant mortality--hundreds of thousands of babies dying annually of diseases which flourish in poverty and neglect.
Next, the rapid increase of the feebleminded, of criminal types and of the pathetic victims of toil in the child-labor factories. Another result is the familiar overcrowding of tenements, the forcing of the children into the street, the ensuing prost.i.tution, alcoholism and almost universal physical and moral unfitness.
Those abhorrent conditions point to a blunder upon the part of those to whom we have entrusted the care of the health of the individual, the family and the race. The medical profession, neglecting the principle involved in preventive medicine, has permitted these conditions to come about. If they were unavoidable, we should have to bear with them, but they are not unavoidable, as shown by facts and figures from other countries where contraceptive information is available.
In Holland, for instance, where the information concerning contraceptives has been accessible to the people, through clinics and pamphlets, since 1881, the general death rate and the infant mortality rate have fallen until they are the lowest in Europe. Amsterdam and The Hague have the lowest infant mortality rates of any cities in the world.
It is good to know that the first of the birth-control clinics of Holland followed shortly after a thorough and enthusiastic discussion of the subject at an international medical congress in Amsterdam in 1878. The Dutch Neo-Malthusian League was founded in 1881. The first birth-control clinic in the world was opened in 1885 by Dr. Aletta Jacobs in Amsterdam. So great were the results obtained that there has been a remarkable increase in the wealth, stamina, stature and longevity of the people, as well as a gradual increase in the population.
These clinics must not be confused with the white enameled rooms which we a.s.sociate with the term in America. They are ordinary offices with the necessary equipment, or rooms in the homes of the nurses, fitted out for the work. They are places for consultation and examination, opened by specially trained nurses who have been instructed by Dr. J.
Rutgers, of The Hague, secretary of the Neo-Malthusian League, who has devoted his life to this work. There have been more than fifty nurses trained specially for this work by Dr. Rutgers. As a nurse completes her course of training, she establishes herself in a community and her place of consultation is called a clinic.
The general results of this service are best judged by tables included in the _Annual Summary of Marriages, Births and Deaths in England, Wales, Etc., for 1912_. [Footnote: (See table on page 208.)]
In Amsterdam, the birth rate dropped from 37.1 for the period of 1881-85 to 24.7 for 1906 and 23.3 in 1912. During the same periods, the death rate fell from 25.1 to 13.1, and in 1912 to 11.2. Infant mortality for the same period fell from 203 for each thousand living births to 90, and in 1912 to 64. Illegitimate fertility also decreased. Results in other cities, as shown by the table at the end of this chapter, are exactly similar.
In the Australian Commonwealth, where birth control is taken as a matter of course, and information concerning contraceptives is available to the ma.s.ses, the births were so well distributed in 1915 that while the birth rate was 27.3, there was an infant death rate of only 10.7. New Zealand, which is also one of the typical birth-control countries, had a birth rate of 25.3 and an infant death rate of only 9.1 for the same year. These figures are in marked and happy contrast with those for the birth registration of the United States, where the reports for 1916 show a birth rate of 24.8, but an infant death rate of 14.7. A similar comparison may be made with the German Empire in 1913, where there was a birth rate of 27.5 in 1913 and an infant mortality rate of 15. In these countries, birth control information is not so generally within the reach of the ma.s.ses and, consequently, the largest percentage of births come to that cla.s.s least able to bring children to full maturity, as indicated in the infant mortality rates.
In conclusion, I am going to make a statement which may at first seem exaggerated, but which is, nevertheless, carefully considered. The effort toward racial progress that is being made to-day by the medical profession, by social workers, by the various charitable and philanthropic organizations and by state inst.i.tutions for the physically and mentally unfit, is practically wasted. All these forces are in a very emphatic sense marking time. They will continue to mark time until the medical profession recognizes the fact that the ever increasing tide of the unfit is overwhelming all that these agencies are doing for society. They will continue to mark time until they get at the source of these destructive conditions and apply a fundamental remedy. That remedy is birth control.
[Footnote: Amsterdam [Malthusian (Birth Control) League started 1881; Dr. Aletta Jacobs gave advice to poor women, 1885]:
1881-85 1906-10 1912
Birth rate......... 37.1 27.7 23.3 per 1,000 of population Death rate......... 25.1 13.1 11.2 per 1,000 of population
INFANTILE MORTALITY:
Deaths in first year................ 203 90 64 per thousand living births
The Hague [now headquarters of the Neo-Malthusian (Birth Control) League]:
1881-85 1906-10 1912
Birth rate........... 38.7 27.5 23.6 per 1,000 of population Death rate........... 23.3 13.2 10.9 per 1,000 of population
INFANTILE MORTALITY:
Deaths in first year................. 214 99 66 per thousand living births
These figures are the lowest in the whole list of death rates and infantile mortalities in the summary of births and deaths in cities in this report.
Rotterdam:
1881-85 1906-10 1912