Reproductive Rights Quotes
This is a wonderful example of a good rhetorical technique. He focuses the attention on the unborn by observing that all his opponents on this point have already been born. Of course, he and all his supporters on the point—those who are against abortion—have already been born also. So what would the unborn say? Well that no one could know nor can any one know if the unborn have any thoughts must less thoughts on the subject of abortion.
Many people erroneously attribute this quotation to Margaret Sanger, who had observed that the upper class women generally knew how to practice birth control and could obtain the devices that were available at the time while the poor and uneducated knew very little and not only did not have the money to obtain birth control devices, but the laws made it illegal so that no one dared to promote it. Du Bois was in many ways, a Black elitist and this quotation reflects that.
Both the United States and Canada had laws regulating the sexual behavior of citizens in the privacy of their own homes. It was not just homosexuality that the state attempted to control. Even the specific positions and methods of heterosexual intercourse were controlled by some states. Oral sex, certain positions of intercourse and other “details” could put a person in jail. Canada, a parliamentary nation, changed this by legislation. In the United States, it was the Supreme Court decisions protecting privacy that invalidated these old sexual role restrictions and prescriptions. For example, just 4 years before this quotation was made, 1963, the state of Connecticut was ordered (Griswald v. Connecticut) to release a pharmacist for the “crime” of filling a doctor’s prescription for condoms for a married couple where the wife would likely die if she became pregnant and carried the baby to term.
This is one of the earliest Christian statements about the immorality of contraception. There was no official position of the Roman Catholic Church against contraception, until 1930 when Pope Pius XI issued his stricture. See {625105}. The reference to Onan is to the Old Testament. Onan however was not using contraception. He was masturbating. Augustine’s view was that everything sexual was designed by God for procreation. Therefore, any sexual function, not for the purpose of procreation, is inappropriate. Contraceptive techniques were used in Biblical times as well as later. The only difference was the technological sophistication and reliability of the different devices and methods.
