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CHAPTER EIGHT

healthy if they were given good environmental condition, better housing," &c., and "the State needs every child born." This series of fallacies is best demolished at its foundation by demonstrating the utter falsity of the idea that "all infants are born healthy." Very much evidence can be adduced, but I will quote one record only. The live births at the Baudelocque Clinic (where cleanliness and "housing conditions" at any rate may be accepted as satisfactory) in 1920 numbered 3,021. Of these 103 died in the first ten days, the causes of death being "especially congenital debility due to premature birth and hereditary disease."[1] The obvious prophylaxis for such cases is to prevent conception in all women as are likely to yield births of unsatisfactory type. Furthermore, one has only to mention syphilis to be reminded of the myriads of infants who were born already rotted by disease which "environment" could never make normal.

Æsthetic Objections are often raised by those who have not themselves experienced the agony of rapidly repeated and uncontrolled pregnancy. By such people 'All contraceptives are so sordid and unæsthetic

  1. ↑ "The World's Health," Red Cross Soc. Rev., vol. iii, No. 2, February, 1922, pp. 68-69.

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