Chapter XLII: Section 1: An Offence Against the Law of Nature

Birth control is against the law of nature, which Christians believe to be the reflection of the divine law in human affairs, and any violation of this law was held to be vicious even by the ancient pagan world. To this argument an advocate of birth control has made answer:

"We interfere with nature at every point--we shave, cut our hair, cook
our food, fill cavities in our teeth (or wear artificial teeth), clothe
ourselves, wear boots, hats, and wash our faces, so why should birth
alone be sacred from the touch and play of human moulding?" [100]

Why? For a very simple reason. Birth control belongs to the moral sphere; it essentially affects man's progress in good, whereas all the other things that he mentions have no more moral significance than has the practice of agriculture. Regarded in the light of the law of nature they are neutral actions, neither good nor bad in themselves, raising no question of right or wrong, and having no real bearing on the accomplishment of human destiny. To make no distinction between the merely physical law of nature (expressed in the invariable tendency of everything to act according to its kind) and the natural moral law which governs human conduct, is to pronounce oneself a materialist. Yet even a materialist ought to denounce the practice of birth control, as it violates the laws of nature which regulate physical well-being. "But," says the materialist, "it is not possible for anyone to act against nature, because all actions take place _in_ nature, and therefore every act is a natural act." Quite so: in that sense murder is a natural act; even unnatural vice is a natural act. Will any one defend them? There is a natural law in the physical world, and there is a natural law in conscience--a law of right conduct. Certain actions are under the control of the human will, which is able to rebel against the moral law of nature, and the pagan poet Aeschylus traces all human sorrow to "the perverse human will omnipresent."

As birth control means the deliberate frustration of a natural act which might have issued in a new life, it is an unnatural crime, and is stigmatised by theologians as a sin akin to murder. To this charge birth controllers further reply that millions of the elements of procreation are destroyed by Nature herself, and that "to add one more to these millions sacrificed by Nature is surely no crime." This attempt at argument is pathetic. If these people knew even the A.B.C. of biology, they would know that millions of those elements are allowed to perish by Nature for a definite purpose--namely, _to make procreation more certain_. It is in order that the one may achieve the desired end that it is reinforced by millions of others. Moreover, although millions of deaths in the world occur every year from natural causes, it would nevertheless, I fear, be a crime if I were to cause one more death by murdering a birth controller.