Quotes Supporting Comprehensive Sex Education from the Birth Control Review

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American Life League exposes Planned Parenthood's fraud in California and reminds Americans why Planned Parenthood should not receive ANY tax money, especially in the midst of a current financial crisis.




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Quotes Supporting Comprehensive Sex Education from the Birth Control Review
1918

"The relation between sexual union and procreation, as we understand it, is the result of intelligent observation, not of instinctive or intuitive knowledge."

H.C. Dekker. "Improving On Instinct." Birth Control Review, Volume II, Number 9 (September 1918), page 10.

"Voluntary motherhood also objects to abortive operations. We further believe that it [voluntary motherhood through birth control] would minimize the number of these illegal acts [abortions] because we stand for education along sex lines by competent teachers."

Rabbi Rudolph I. Coffee, Ph.D. "Voluntary Motherhood." Birth Control Review, Volume II, Number 11 (November 1918), page 11.

1925

"All organizations which endorse the principles and objects of the federation are admitted to membership, except those which include abortion in their program. The objects of the federation are: ...

1. To impress on the people and governments of all nations the problems and dangers of overpopulation.

2. To diminish and eventually control or eliminate overpopulation by extending the knowledge of hygienic contraceptive methods as distinct from abortion.

3. To oppose all repressive legislation against the proper provision of hygienic contraceptive instruction ...

5. To promote race improvement primarily by enabling parents to restrict their families to those children whom they can bear and rear in justice to their own health and economic circumstances, and by enabling them to abstain from parenthood in all cases where hereditary disease or defect might render the offspring unlikely to become healthy and self-supporting citizens.

6. To promote sexual responsibility and diminish the spread of venereal disease and promiscuity by making it known that young people can marry early without regard to their economic position or the fear of having children they cannot support, and to encourage instruction in sex questions."

Statement by C.C. Little, President. "The International Federation of Birth Control Leagues." Birth Control Review, Volume IX, Number 9 (September 1925), page 253.

1928

"What does the World League for Sexual Reform aim at?

"It aims at being the headquarters of a campaign against a false sexual morality, a false morality, to which already endless numbers of human beings have been sacrificed, and which continues daily to demand its victims.

"In this fight we mean to use exclusively those mental weapons and those facts, which sexual science (in the widest sense) gives us.

"What is out of accord with the laws of nature and science can never be ethically right or truly moral. Where opposition exists between the forces of nature and of society (as, for example, in the population question) one must be at pains to do away with this opposition by using the conscious will of mankind to bring these forces into harmonious cooperation.

"We are unable to recognize as binding the varying rules prescribed at different times by the moment. We can recognize only what is in agreement with the teachings of life and love.

"The following ten points deserve special consideration:

1. Marriage reform. Wedlock must be raised to the position of a living comradeship between two people. This necessitates a reform in the marriage contract, conjugal rights and divorce.

2. The position of women as members of society. Women have not by any means everywhere as yet won the equal rights that are their due in political, economic, social and sexual spheres.

3. Birth Control i.e. greater sense of responsibility in the begetting of children. We believe in making harmless contraceptives known, combat on the other hand both abortion and the penalizing of abortion.

4. Eugenics in the sense of Nietzsche's words: "You shall not merely continue the race, but move it upward!"

5. A fair judgment of those who are unsuited to marriage, above all the intermediate sexual types.

6. Tolerance of free sexual relations, especially protection of the unmarried mother and the child born out of wedlock.

7. The prevention of prostitution and venereal disease.

8. The conception of aberrations of sexual desire not as criminal, sinful or vicious but as a more or less pathological phenomenon.

9. The setting up of a code of sexual law, which does not interfere with the mutual sexual will of grown-up persons.

10. The question of sexual education and enlightenment.

"All these points have in the last fifty years been the subject of lively discussions, which have not only often fundamentally altered the whole conception, but also the whole organization of sexual life. We can in this sense speak of a sexual crisis. The old morality with its terrible sexual misery still has the upper hand, and the human prejudices and condemnation are still heaped higher."

"News Notes." Birth Control Review, Volume XII, Number 7 (July 1928), page 215.

1931

"We will seek opportunities to do our part, as medical societies and as practitioners and specialists, in sex education of the young ... We whose hypocrisy and silence have fostered them will no longer play into the Devil's hands ..."

Robert L. Dickinson. "On the Control of Conception." Birth Control Review, Volume XV, Number 1 (January 1931), page 5.

"I am sure that a more comprehensive plan of sex education would result in more marriages, and more permanence in marriage. There can be no doubt that this is very much needed."

Ben B. Lindsey. "The Companionate Marriage." Birth Control Review, Volume XV, Number 3 (March 1931), page 79.

"This book is a definite milestone in sex education, not so much because it turns its back squarely on theological traditions and doctrine without rancor or radicalism, as because it offers for the first time a constructive substitute to take their place ..."

Advertisement for A.L. Wolbarst, M.D.'s book Generations of Adam. Birth Control Review, Volume XV, Number 3 (March 1931), page 89.

""Where figures have been obtained," says Mr. Dewar, the leader of the Brooklyn group, "it would appear that not over five per cent of the young men and boys who participate in local Y.M.C.A. groups have had sex instruction from their parents. It is therefore plainly the duty of the Y.M.C.A. to provide this instruction for its members."

Howard K. Hollister. "Sex Education in the Y.M.C.A." Birth Control Review, Volume XV, Number 7 (July 1931), page 208.

"I find myself in complete agreement with Havelock Ellis in his article on Marriage ) An Enduring Institution. I believe that monogamy is the ideal to which society should approximate. There should be nothing compulsory about it. Marriage should be made harder and divorce easier. Plenty of sex education and probably sane and decent sex experience should precede permanent marriage. The new sexology, far from destroying marriage and the family, is the only thing which can make possible a happy and enduring marriage for the majority of mankind. Most marital discord is due to absence of sex knowledge and to sexual maladjustment, both of which would be eliminated if we were civilized enough to disseminate scientific knowledge on sex matters and to permit pre-conjugal sex experience.

"... Obviously, the bonds of theological and legal intimidation are bursting. The new family order must rest upon intelligence, freedom, and adequate information."

Harry Elmer Barnes. "Comments on Ellis' Article: Freedom and Knowledge Needed." Birth Control Review, Volume XV, Number 7 (July 1931), page 210.

"In regard to the positive recommendation of masturbation, one is tempted to question whether any father or mother knows enough of the inner psyche of the child to make a recommendation involving something so primary. It would seem therefore, much the wiser course to present the facts of masturbation as we know them and leave the application to the individual child himself, so that he may make such use of the information given him as will fit into his own psychic experiences."

Cecile Pilpel. Review of Mary Ware Dennett's book The Sex Education of Children. Birth Control Review, Volume XV, Number 11 (November 1931), page 325.

1934

"The health of the family depends on several factors.

1. The prevention of venereal diseases. This can only be accomplished by early marriage which will prevent promiscuity and its resultant prostitution, and traffic in women.

2. The complete elimination of abortion as a means of regulating the family. Present scientific knowledge of birth control has reached such a stage that abortion is entirely unnecessary and the abortion rate is mute evidence of the neglect of society to care for its mothers. Knowledge of contraception takes from a woman her greatest fear in marriage, and replaces it with the desire to have children when she is ready and able.

4. Education along sex lines should be such that from infancy through childhood, adolescence and to maturity, the individuals will be able to avoid mental and emotional conflict on this subject.

7. Sterilization of the insane and feeble-minded has become a necessary institution in modern society. Its value in the prevention of the birth of people unable to care for themselves or their offspring and of people who have even no value to themselves is obvious."

"... Abortion as a means of limiting the family must be recognized as an extreme danger to the life and health of your women. Check the death rate from this cause in your own country and visit your hospitals to see the number of women who are fighting for their lives against hemorrhage, fever and infection. Talk with the physicians in your cities who are specializing in women's diseases and learn of the many, many cases they have that are suffering for long years from inflammatory processes in the tubes and ovaries; learn of the cases of sterility where the woman would give learn of the cases of sterility where the woman would give anything to have a child; and learn of the women who undergo a painful and more dangerous confinement due to the previous infection; then you will realize with me the tremendous damage done by abortions. There is hardly a country today where the death rate from this cause is not going up. Even when the operation is legalized and done in hospitals with well-trained physicians, it is still a terribly destructive experience.

"The application of our present knowledge of birth control methods can practically eliminate abortions. The technique is so simple that it can be applied anywhere as long as thorough instruction is first given ..."

Nadina R. Kavinoky, M.D. "A Program for Family Health" (Excerpts from a paper presented at the Third Pan-Pacific Women's Conference, Honolulu, August 1934). Birth Control Review, Volume II, Number 3 (New Series, December 1934), page 4.

1935

"Whatever else religion may teach today, it teaches that human progress is dependent on human initiative and human direction. Religion today regards man as able rationally and scientifically to control himself, his world, the world of energy, and the world of values for the satisfaction of human desires; and in proper proportions it glorifies these desires ...

"In accordance with this trend, the attitude of the church toward the whole problem of sex is changing. Religion is becoming actively interested in the erotic life where for ages the grossest ignorance and credulity, superstition and tyranny have held sway. In the place now occupied by such ignorance and credulity, such superstition and tyranny, the Church today will help you install knowledge and enlightened virtue.

"Too often in the past sex life has been thought of as largely an evil to be tolerated for the purpose of propagation. But as the church came to terms with science in other fields, it slowly capitulated in the field of sex. Here the church is no longer willing for nature to be uncontrolled by intelligence and scientific techniques. In recent years the following church organizations have gone on record in support of birth control:

Committee on Marriage and the Home of the Federal Council of the Churches of Christ in America

Lambeth Conference of Bishops of the Church of England

General Council of Congregational and Christian Churches

Universalist General Convention

The American Unitarian Association

Central Conference of American Rabbis

New York East Conference and other regional sections of the Methodist Episcopal Church

Special Committee of the Women's Problems Group of the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting of Friends

The 1934 Convention of the Y.W.C.A.

"The Rhythm method now making such rapid headway among Catholics, while not a satisfactory method of birth control, is nevertheless a distinct move in the direction of a modern attitude on the matter; for if sex life is ethical apart from propagation, then insistence on natural as distinguished from other scientific methods is an untenable position and will undoubtedly be abandoned in favor of techniques that offer greater safety than can the "safe period."

"The major cultural, ethical and religious significance of birth control is that it puts the realm of sex on the side of intelligence, control and human satisfactions. The basic importance of birth control is not primarily in its emphasis on the small family system ... but in its principle of intelligent control of life processes ... And perhaps most important of all, the mind of the public must be so educated that sex and all that pertains thereto can be thought and spoken of with the frankness that now prevails in the fields of dietetics and esthetics, or of ethics and religion."

Rev. Curtis W. Reese, Dean of the Abraham Lincoln Center, in a speech on the church and birth control. Birth Control Review, Volume II, Number 5 (New Series, February 1935), pages 2 and 3.