Conception Control and Its Effects on the Individual and the Nation | Page 7

later all at school, and
her life work is in this way so arranged that she may give most service
to the world in addition to carrying on the race.
Our conclusion is that for mothers and children it is very desirable that
no contraceptives should be used in the early years of married life.
In the vast majority of families where no restrictions or unnatural
means are used and where mothers nurse their children for eight or nine
months, children only come every two years. Even if a young couple
decide that they cannot afford to bring up more than four children, they
have first to prove that four children will be given them--in many cases
they will not have so many, and as years go by the fertility of the
mother becomes progressively less, so that if child-bearing is
postponed till after thirty, in a certain number of families no children
are born. There are many men and women who bitterly regret having
let the years go by in which children might have been born to them, and
it is only fair that young couples of to-day should fully understand this
risk.

CHAPTER III
METHODS
There are certain points in regard to methods of preventing conception
which should be made clear.
It is, of course, obvious that conception can be voluntarily controlled
by abstention from intercourse except when children are desired. This
has been called a counsel of perfection. It could only rightly be so
described where such a method of life was both desired and approved
by both husband and wife. It would not be a fair thing for either to
enforce a practically celibate life on the other without the fullest
understanding and consent before the marriage vows were taken.

But conception can also be controlled by avoidance of those parts of
the monthly cycle in which conception most commonly takes place.
That in the great majority of women there is a time in the monthly
cycle when no conception occurs has been noted for a long time. The
rough-and-ready method of reckoning the date of birth in relations to
the last menstrual period is an example of the assumption that
conception will probably have taken place a week later, and the
frequency with which such reckoning is justified shows that it is not
altogether unfounded. During the war it was possible to make some
more exact observations owing to the short leave granted to soldiers to
visit their homes. Seigel has published a paper in the "Münchener
Medizinische Wochenschrift," 1916, in which he gives information
regarding the conception of between two and three hundred children
born during the war. He finds that the likelihood of fertilisation
increases from the first day of menstruation, reaching the highest point
six days later, the fertile period remains almost at the same height till
the 12th or 13th day, and then declines gradually until the 22nd day,
after which there is absolute sterility.
This suggests that conception control can be attained without artificial
methods if intercourse is confined to one week in the month.
Such control of conception, though natural, does not make it any more
desirable to space the births unduly so that the children are brought up
in separate units instead of in a happy family group in which they can
share games and interests--but it does avoid the risks which are
associated with artificial methods of conception control.
It is not proposed to discuss in detail artificial methods in this pamphlet,
because no advice can be wisely given on this subject in a general way.
Those who after careful consideration choose to use artificial means to
prevent child-bearing will be wise if they consult their medical
attendant as to those methods which are least harmful for their
individual case, and ask for careful instruction in their use.
Most of the methods so widely advertised are productive of diseased
conditions, whether from the nature of the method itself or from the
way in which it is used, and all of those recommended to women

interfere with normal physiological processes. The object aimed at in
methods recommended to women, is either to produce, by drugs or
otherwise, conditions in the vagina inimical to the life of the male cell,
or to prevent by mechanical means the reception of the semen into the
uterus. Owing to the uncertainty in the results of either of the above
methods of prevention, the later editions of books which teach
conception control now advocate the use of both methods at the same
time in order to approximate more closely to certainty of result.
All these artificial preparations for intercourse demand from the woman
an investigation of and interference with her own internal organs,
which is revolting to all decent women, and such teaching is