Dr. Mayer, in his _Rapports Conjugaux_,
showed that the death rates among the celibate religious orders
studied were nearly twice as high as those of the laity.
Can anyone knowing the facts ask that we recommend continence as a
birth-control measure?
Virtually all of the dangers to health involved in absolute continence
are involved also in the practice of continence broken only when it is
desired to bring a child into the world. In the opinion of some
medical authorities, it is even worse, because of the almost constant
excitation of unsatisfied sex desire by the presence of the mate.
People who think that they believe in this sort of family limitation
have much to say about "self-control." Usually they will admit that to
abstain from all but a single act of sexual intercourse each year is
an indication of high powers of self-restraint. Yet that one act,
performed only once a year, might be sufficient to "keep a woman with
one child in her womb and another at her breast" during her entire
childbearing period. That would mean from eighteen to twenty-four
children for each mother, provided she survived so many births and
lactations. Contraceptives are quite as necessary to these
"self-controlled" ones who do not desire children every year
as to those who lead normal, happy love lives.
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