THE • LIMITS OF BIRTH-CONTROL
[To the Editor of THE SPECTATOR.] Sin,—The letters in your issue of March 10th from H. C. A. Colville and W. A. Bread seem to me exactly to touch the root of the problem in its practical everyday, year in and year out, aspect—the aspect which the " self-control " advocates seem entirely to ignore. Let me give a concrete case—my own, and it must be typical of thousands of married couples.
My wife and I were both twenty-four years old when wo married : at twenty-five my wife nearly died giving birth to a son, who only survived a few hours : fortunately she was in the .bands of an eminent gynaecologist, and . her life was saved—but with the warning that no more children wete possible except with the gravest. danger to her life.
Married young, then, and with all our lives before us, ardent anti-birth-control advocates would have recommended to us " self-control "—which, for obvious reasons, could only mean complete abstinence. Or, to put it in another way : at twenty-four we were solemnly made husband and wife ; but at twenty-five we should have been expected miraculously to change our status, and suddenly to become brother and sister— and not only that, but brother and sister under completely unnatural conditions, financial circumstances making physical separation impossible.
We have now been married for fifteen years. According to the " self-control " theory of life, we should have spent only one year as husband and wife, and fourteen years in a com- pletely unnatural state as brother and sister. What we actually did, on the other hand, was to accept the fact that we were unable to have children, and, thanks to the use of contraceptives, we have enjoyed fifteen years of the most perfect married happiness—a happiness which we also hope and pray will be given us for many years to come.
Someone may reply that birth-control may possibly he justified in such a case where there are medical grounds : may I anticipate that by asking why ? Had our son lived, and had there been no medical reasons for preventing further children, we should still have practised birth-control for these last fourteen years on financial grounds, as, owing to ill-health, I am unable to work, and it would have been absolutely impos- sible on our small limited income to have fed, clothed, and educated more than one child. In other words, the grounds would have been different, but the position would have been identical.
I come back, Sir, to the point I started with—will the advo- cates of " self-control " never come down from the clouds of theory to the hard level of everyday married life, with its natural and legitimate desires ?—I am, Sir, &c., . . EXPERTO CREDE.
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