English methods of birth control
1915 1915 1910s 18 pages 12 The more I see of women who have aborted, and the more I see the results of abortions, the more convinced I am of their injurious effect on women, and the stronger do I urge the knowledge of prevention of conception. The results of abortion are usually of far more serio...
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| Institution: | MCR - The Modern Records Centre, University of Warwick |
| Language: | English English |
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[1915?]
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| Online Access: | http://hdl.handle.net/10796/E31123A9-7981-4AE3-8578-E6E03AD7C22B http://hdl.handle.net/10796/748B3204-67C0-42A8-957E-0D88D865689B |
| Summary: | 1915
1915
1910s
18 pages
12 The more I see of women who have aborted, and the more I see the results of abortions, the more convinced I am of their injurious effect on women, and the stronger do I urge the knowledge of prevention of conception. The results of abortion are usually of far more serious effect on the woman's health than a full-term child birth. There is the possibility of the womb not returning to its natural size, but remaining large and heavy, tending to fall away from its proper position in the body. Then one abortion so often leaves the uterus in a condition to conceive very easily again, and unless prevention is strictly followed another pregnancy will surely occur. Frequent abortions have a tendency to establish sterility or barrenness in the woman as well as result in pelvic ailments. That there are cases where an abortion is justifiable, no intelligent person can deny ; but I do claim that the hundreds of thousands of abortions being performed in America each year is a disgrace to civilisation, and I lay the necessity for them and the illness and sufferings and deaths resulting from them at the doors of a Government whose authority extends beyond the limits of the people's intention, and which in its puritanical blindness insists upon suffering and death from ignorance rather than life and happiness from knowledge and prevention. Nearly all authorities to-day agree that the necessity of abortions could be greatly abolished by knowledge of prevention. One quotation from Havelock Ellis ("Sex and Society") sums it up in a nutshell. " In order to do away with the need for abortion, and to counteract the propaganda in its favour, our main reliance must be placed, on the one hand, on increased foresight in the determination of conception and increased knowledge of the means for preventing conception ; and on the other hand, on a better provision by the State for the care of pregnant women, married and unmarried alike, and a practical recognition of the qualified mother's claim on society. There can be no doubt that in many a charge of criminal abortion the real offence lies at the door of those who failed to exercise their social and professional
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| Physical Description: | TEXT |