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exploitation of the means, which may be both unsafeguarded
as to expediency and exorbitant as to price, thus imposing
risk or hardship upon the purchaser;
(b) the effect of the practice of unsafeguarded artificial
contraception may be not only local and physical, but general,
psychological, and even anti-social;
(c) the means may be deleterious in their socials or physical
results, and are in any case uncertain in action. Experience
indicates that in a substantial percentage of cases artificial
contraceptive methods if unskilled in application may
fail to prevent conception;
(d) there is no absolute guarantee of value—physical,
social, moral or humane; such methods can be used wisely
and beneficially, but they can also be used for selfishness,
debasement and the encouragement of undesirable habits; the
variableness and morality of the value is dependent upon
human character and on many circumstances and conditions.
(e) artificial contraception cannot in any case be a substitute
for social amelioration, self-control, restraint, mutual
consideration, or decent and worthy conditions of life.
The question of a Local Authority engaging itself in the provision
of facilities for artificial contraception has arisen in recent years,
partly on account of an increased public interest in this subject,
partly because of their extending sphere of duty, and incidentally
because of a proposal to use the Maternity and Child Welfare
Centres for this purpose. Public interest has been engendered by
the establishment of voluntary "birth control clinics" (which
being few may be largely attended), and by wider realisation of
the ill-effects on the health and strength of the mother which may
follow too frequent childbearing. The advocacy of birth-restriction
has extended in view of the obvious social and economic
difficulties which may accompany large families. Indeed, some
claimants are desirous of limiting an increase of population, a
question which lies near the origin of many of our national problems.
Again, the existence of the Maternity and Child Welfare
Centres (which now number 2,820) has seemed at first sight to
furnish convenient places for instruction to be afforded in artificial
contraception.
4. In the Report for 1925 (page 129) it was explained that
the Maternity and Infant Welfare Centre only provides instruction
and advice to the expectant or nursing mother in the care of
her own health and that of her infant, and not to married or
unmarried women contemplating the application of contraceptive
methods. Nor is it the function of an ante-natal centre to give
advice in regard to "birth control," which might obviously be
contrary to its specific purpose. In exceptional cases, where
avoidance of pregnancy seems desirable on medical grounds, the
mother attending a maternity or ante-natal welfare centre should
be referred for particular advice as to birth control to a private
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