Summing it all up, then, continence may meet the needs of a few
natures, but it does not meet the needs of the masses. To enforce
continence upon those whose natures do not demand it, is an injustice,
the cruelty and the danger of which has been underestimated rather
than exaggerated. It matters not whether this wrong is committed by
the church, through some outworn dogma; by the state, through the laws
prohibiting contraceptives, or by society, through the conditions
which prevent marriage when young men and women reach the age at which
they have need of marriage.
The world has been governed too long by repression. The more
fundamental the force that is repressed the more destructive its
action. The disastrous effects of repressing the sex force are written
plainly in the health rates, the mortality statistics, the records of
crime and the entry books of the hospitals for the insane. Yet this is
not all the tale, for there are still the little understood hosts of
sexually abnormal people and the monotonous misery of millions who do
not die early nor end violently, but who are, nevertheless, devoid of
the joys of a natural love life.
As a means of birth control, continence is as impracticable for most
people as it is undesirable.
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