Page:Contraception; 1st ed. (IA in.ernet.dli.2015.94163).pdf/264

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CONTRACEPTION

the less an iniquity because it has at present the approval of Church and State."

To meet the ever intenser feeling of the public that the ordinances of the Churches are against God's law when they denounce all scientific (or as they call it "artificial") birth control, most sects having compromised as regards the principle of voluntary procreation, now permit some method or other to effect clumsily, harmfully or insecurely that control of conception which can be easily, harmlessly and reliably secured by the use of the best methods. And having yielded on the principle the Churches betray mere childish perversity in preferring bad methods to good ones. The claims made by the Churches that the methods they recommend (such as "abstention" and "the safe period") are "lawful" and "natural," are in actual fact false claims and are due to an ignorance of physiological fact: these very methods break profound physiological laws and are much more unnatural than the use of a simple rubber cap which permits fully completed natural coitus at the times of natural excitation.

In this connection it is illuminating to recall the attitude of departed clerics and some doctors towards earlier reforms: In

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