z:\ ambedkar\vol-02\vol2-04.indd MK SJ+YS 21-9-2013/YS-8-11-2013 264
264 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES
The present keen struggle of life renders timely marriage impossible for many and thus exposes them to various diseases and habits. Many women become invalid for life and some even lose their lives by the birth of children in their diseased condition or in too great numbers or in too rapid succession. Attempts at abortion, resorted to for the prevention of unwanted progeny, exact a heavy toll of female lives. Unwanted children are often neglected by their mothers and hence they become nothing but a burden to society which is further deteriorated by the addition of defective progeny from diseased persons. Birth-control is the only sovereign specific that can do away with all these calamities. Whenever a woman is disinclined to bear a child for any reason whatsoever, she must be in a position to prevent conception and bringing forth progeny which should be entirely dependent on the choice of women. Society would in no way profit by the addition of unwanted progeny. Only those children who are welcomed by their parents, can be of social benefit and hence every woman must be enabled to resort to prevention of conception quite easily.
Poverty is the root-cause of immorality. The following passage from the essay read by Prof. Dr. Tondler before the Congress at Vienna in 1933 would show the evil consequences of insufficiency of living accommodation. The professor said, “On the average every family gets one room in Germany, two and a half rooms in France and three rooms in England. Seventy-five thousand families had no tenements of their own in Berlin in 1925. The result is that children sleep with the adults not only in the same room but also in the same bed. Many children lose their lives by the overcrowding in insanitary dwellings. Whole families are stricken with veneral diseases. Girls have to succumb to sexual intercourse even before they are mature. Sexual connections often take place between parents and their children and brothers and sisters. The boys learn to commit thefts and the girls become prostitutes. The same condition prevails at Vienna. In 1919, out of the tenements let out, 10 per cent. had only one small room ; 37 per cent. had one big room and 23 per cent. had one small room and one big room. Out of the children between the ages of fourteen and eighteen who maintained themselves, twenty per cent. had no separate beds of their own. Towns and villages fare even worse.”
In our country, the same condition prevails in cities like Bombay. A few exceptions apart, it is observed that virtue is palsied where poverty prevails. Further on it will be shown how it is well-nigh impossible to uproot poverty
without the aid of birth-control. The aphorism, बुभुक्षित : किम् न करोती पापम्,is well known.
When we have thus realised that birth-control is the sine qua-non for every progress, we must consider the means to attain that end. To be satisfied with only that much of sexual enjoyment that is necessary for getting the desired number of children and to banish sexual thoughts from one’s mind when progeny is not required, is one of the ways. The use of modern contraceptives is the other way. As for the first way, it must be