Page:Contraception; 1st ed. (IA in.ernet.dli.2015.94163).pdf/229

curious ideas of earlier ages and discuss carefully all the arguments based on pseudoscientific premises. I propose, however, at present only to deal with a few of the statements made in recent years by persons of standing, or else with ideas which are in such general circulation as to influence public opinion.

The commonest form in which the pseudo-scientific argument is found is some variety of the pernicious generalization involved in the use of the oft-repeated phrase that "birth control methods are harmful."

The double fallacy contained in this phrase depends upon the facts that birth control methods are very numerous, varied in their actions and reactions, and in the procedure they involve (as has been noted in the preceding pages) and that while one method may be harmful to certain people in one respect and another to other types in another respect, there are methods which are not at all harmful to normal people. Nevertheless in the unwholesome atmosphere of prurient concealment which has for so long surrounded sex subjects in this country, the fact that even untrained minds have detected a certain amount of harmfulness in some forms of procedure has lent colour to the