Many people seem to think that contraceptives prevent venereal disease
at the same time that they prevent conception. But this is not so. The
use of methods of prevention by women is no protection to them from
infection.
3. We have, moreover, to take a wider view, and consider who will
receive and act upon the advice given, and hence what the result will
be on the differential birth-rate of the community.
It is quite obvious that the educated classes can most easily follow
instructions which result in protection from conception, and since
such knowledge most easily circulates among the more highly endowed
classes, it has been claimed that it is important to make efforts to
let the knowledge be so widespread that it may reach all. The result,
however, could only be that the practice of conception control would
spread throughout the upper, middle and more intelligent of the
working classes, and this would involve a very serious reduction in
the births of those who furnish the leaders and efficient workers in
all branches of life, and in those only.
For the birth-rate amongst the least intelligent, least efficient and
the mentally deficient will be unaffected. It must be apparent that
after a very few generations of such weeding out of the best, with the
continuous multiplication of the worst type of citizen, the general
standard of efficiency, enterprise and executive skill of the nation
would be seriously impaired.
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