Salt Lake Tribune | 1916-12-24 | Page 35 | Question of Laws on Birth Control

"1 QUESTION OF LAWS ON BIRTH CONTROL r-TTHEN Judge William H. Wad-yy Wad-yy hams of the Gourt of General Sessions of New York refused not long apo to pass sentence for burglary bur-glary upon a mother of six children, tho wife of a consumptive, and said of laws prohibiting birth regulation, "I believe t we live in an age of ignorance, which In ! the future will be looked back upon aghast," he referred, it may be supposed, only to conditions in the United States. For on the continent of Rurope the laws governing the control of births have In recent years been radically revised, re-vised, and present a very different as- pect from those in this country. ; Judce YVadhams mentioned Holland ; as a country which has liberal laws on the subject, and it is possible that he Jiav have been familiar wilh investiga- tlons of C. V. Drysdale, a doctor of science sci-ence of London. Dr. Drysdale pointp out that the society which seeks to instruct in-struct the poorer classes of Holland regarding the means of restriction (through the agency of medical men and midwivesl has had the countenance of ministers of state .and been recognized by royal decree since 1S95 as a society of public utility. The essential point in this connection connec-tion is that Holland is the only country In which artificial restriction has been extended to the poor, instead of to the rich and educated classes, as in other countries. The Holland birth rate rose as usual to the year 1S76, when it was about 37 per 1.000, and has since fallen steadily to about C9. But Dr. Drysdale observes that the death rate and infantile in-fantile mortal! i y have fallen more rapidly and satisfactorily than in any other country so much so. indeed, that the excess of births over deaths is in- ' creasing astonishingly. At the same time Dr. Drysdale asserts as-serts that there seems to be little or none of the physical deterioration which we hear so much of in England and Germany and many other countries. In his book entitled "The Small Family System," published in 1314 by B. W. Huebsch. of Xcw York, Dr. Drysdale save: "Holland is the one and only country coun-try where some members at least of the medical profession have openly approved ap-proved and helped to extend , artificial restriction: and not only has its heal'h. as shown by its death rae. and infantile mortality, improved fas'er than in any other country in the wnrid, but it was eta ted at the recent eugenics congress that the stature of the Dutch people was increasing more rapidly than that of any other country by no less than four inches within the last fifty years." According to the official year book of the Netherlands, the proportion of young men drawn for the army who were more than 5 feet 7 inches in height has increased from 24 to 474 per cent since 1S55, while the proportion below 5 feet 2J inches in height has fallen from 25 per cent to below S per cent. The explanation ex-planation is. first, that medical co-operation In Holland enables the Dutch people peo-ple to employ the most hyefenic methods of limitation; and. secondly, that the knowledge of such methods by the very poor enables them to have smaller families, fami-lies, which they can look after better. Moreover, it prevents that recruiting of the race mainly from the pc-ore.st and most rerkkss clashes which is so often deplored in other countries. Ono of the countries most concerned with this question is France. France has been continually held up as the example ex-ample of an effete and dying nation, owing to the fact that it has the lowest birth rate known, and that it occasionally occasion-ally has fewer births than deaths in a year. It is also of special interest, bo-cause bo-cause it is one of the very few countries in which art ificial restrict Ion had been systematically practiced long before the famous Knowlton case of 1876 in England. Eng-land. 4- Charts from the official Annual re phow the course of the birth and death rates In France from ITal onward. In 37S1-S4 the birth rate was 3S.9 prr 1.000, higher than any recorded for England and nearly as high as the highest recorded re-corded in Germany. It fell to 21.1 in the period 1 C 1 -1 90fi, a reduction of 17. S 7'Cr 1,000. But now observe wha t has happened to the d'-ath rate: Jn the J period of 1781-84, before the revolution. ' the death rate vrua no less than J-7 p..T 1,000, and it has since fallen to 19.6 pr 1.000. In othor words, p fall in the hinh rate of 17.8 pr i00 has been accompanied accom-panied by a reduction in the d'ilh rat of 17.4 per 1,000 virtually an eou;il amount so the rate of increase of the French population is hardly any lower now, with a birth rale of 21 per 1,000, than it was with one of "0 per l,onn. There is no doubt, according to advocates ad-vocates of restricted families, that, t hi hea 1th of the French people has improved im-proved durin? the whole period of the falling birth rate and that its population popula-tion has not ben checked thereby, although al-though limitation in mnr-t cn' s h;j:; admittedly ad-mittedly ben rarrird out by n mb'id denounced by theologians and Hor-tors. In England, from 1'-".".': to S7, the birth rale rose from a little over 33 to more than 36 per 1,009.