Page:Contraception; 1st ed. (IA in.ernet.dli.2015.94163).pdf/248

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CONTRACEPTION

because some form of relief and maintenance for unemployables and defectives is almost always given. It is undoubtedly in the national interest that such wasteful births should no longer be allowed to originate haphazard. "Race Suicide" to-day consists in permitting unchecked the growth of a parasitic degenerate population to suck the life-blood from the healthy and responsible sections of the community.

Another argument often brought forward in a general way is the statement that birth control must be bad for the race because the first-born are inferior." This is one of the stock phrases of the opponents of controlled conception, and when tracked to its lair is disposed of by Cobb who pointed out clearly that Hansen's original statement "The inferior quality of the first-born children," Eugenics Review, (1913) was based on serious errors of data and inaccuracies in the methods of corrections of the statistics employed which were consequently inaccurate and misleading.[1] Nevertheless, it takes much to kill an "argument" which lends support to fixed prejudices, and the statement still has a currency it does not deserve. The fact that Prof. Karl

  1. ↑ See J. A. Cobb (1914). Eugenics Review, vol v, No. 4, PP. 357-9. London, 1914.

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