Page:Contraception; 1st ed. (IA in.ernet.dli.2015.94163).pdf/263
CHAPTER EIGHT
female infants, that there were not enough girls left alive for men each to marry a wife of his own! Webb says in 1848: "It is now getting common (under pressure of our Government) for a respectable man to have a wife of his own instead of sharing her with half a dozen brothers, or a dozen fellow villagers." This position having arisen from the parental preference to destroy the entire female child rather than risk the guilt of destroying the ovum in her first menstruation in case they failed to marry her off!
Theological controversies on this and cognate themes are now raging both within the Church of Rome and the Church of England, but this is not the place to consider them in detail; both Churches have yielded the principle of control, and only jib at the use of the best methods, and are still actively obstructive to the entrance of scientific method and reasoning into the vital concern of the procreation of the Race.
Yet surely, as Saleeby[1] said, "The imposition of motherhood upon a married woman in absolute despite of her health and of the interests of the children is none
- ↑ Salreby, C. W. 1912: "Woman and Womanhood, a search for principles." See p. 279.
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