of every inhabitant of this region — the look of paradise or the mark of hell.”
Yet the just distribution of people and resources is possible only “if the rate of population growth is allowed to quiet down and catch its racing breath.”
Finally, the author holds that the task of birth control in the Arab homeland is an easy one, owing to the absence of doctrinal resistance to this regulation and the absence of opposition from the laws laid down concerning it.
And birth control, says the writer, is “the individual's cause,” for it delivers him from a threefold misery: the bodily and psychological misery of woman and man; the economic misery of the family and of mankind; and the social misery of societies that have not yet succeeded in establishing equality as one of the rights of the individual. For there is the tyranny of man over woman, and the tyranny of society over the child, so long as people are measured by the measure of age, the child being compelled to submit in all his affairs to whoever is older and bigger in body than he.
Dr. Qamhawi ends his valuable work by setting out the positive solutions in which the work of birth control is carried on, namely:
1 — The coordination of pregnancy, by limiting and adjusting it, provided this is not done by disposing of a pregnancy already accomplished or by putting an end to a life already begun; and he presents some of the means to which a special body in every society can direct, by its counsels, those who consult it.
2 — The regulation of parenthood, by valuing it at its true worth, standing ready to bear its burdens, and constantly maintaining one's fitness for it. Chief among these is the endeavor to create a physiological, psychological, and social partnership between the two spouses before they attempt to bring children into the world.
3 — The betterment of offspring, and this is achieved by way of appreciating the responsibility laid upon the two parents as a connecting link between deadly diseases and their descendants; and here society must do its duty toward those incapable of understanding this responsibility.
4 — The regulation of abortion, which should not be permitted
except in exceptional cases in which the attempt to preserve the pregnancy has not succeeded.
5 — The treatment of sterility — for a tenth of the marriages in the world are threatened by it — thus delivering husbands and wives from psychological pains, family disturbances, and social problems by ridding them of it.
*
Thus we see that the author has given his study its full due, and has hoped, through birth control, that human beings may one day come to be happy in one another, each one of them knowing how to call himself to account and ask himself: “Have I been able to lighten the misery of my fellow men?”
Kleinert's
At "Al-Zahhar," for provisioning the little ones
All baby needs of the
Kleinert's
brand
The "Layette" shop, Souk al-Tawileh — Beirut