Page:Contraception; 1st ed. (IA in.ernet.dli.2015.94163).pdf/115

"safe period" as a method of controlling conception. It is, in my opinion, only safe in certain types of women, and these are the types which have a natural tendency towards sterility, although they may not be sterile for the whole month. It is a method which individual women find satisfactory and useful, and may legitimately be explained to any patient who desires to use the method, and is herself able to determine what is the limit of her own "safe period." It should not be taught as suitable for general use by the Churches, by Health Visitors, Social Reformers, and others who assume to themselves the position of instructors. Because even if a woman of the "below par" type may find it in her own life absolutely reliable, the poor woman whom she may be instructing, who is probably normal or even a strongly sexed, fertile type of woman, may be entirely and cruelly misled, for, so far as observations and experiences confided to me go, the ordinary working-class healthy woman has no safe period at all. The advocacy of the "safe period," therefore, as a general rule, particularly by those who set themselves up to be spiritual advisers and social reformers, brings the whole subject of sex reform into contempt, as the advice is misleading when applied to normal people.