Page:Contraception; 1st ed. (IA in.ernet.dli.2015.94163).pdf/70

a bride. In circumstances, however, where the couple are rationally intelligent and in good health the matter of their immediate parenthood seems a subject for their own decision rather than one to be settled by their medical adviser.

Most of the opponents of contraception consider it only as a negative measure destined to prevent births and forget its most valuable positive side. In the interests of the offspring, quite apart from considerations of the mother, the use of contraceptives to space births is of great value in reducing infant mortality.

Recent work has demonstrated quite clearly the life-preserving effect of spacing the births of children at suitable intervals. Dr. Weinberg found that the chance of death in the first year alone was so much less as to be almost halved if a two or three-year interval was secured as compared with infants who came as rapidly as with one year's interval or less. These results were obtained from 1,045 cases, all from really poor parents of the same class, and are strikingly shown in text fig. 1, p. 45, taken from a compilation of great value