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ANNUAL REPORT, 1936-1937.
General: The Hong Kong Eugenics League has emerged successfully from its first year of trial, and may shortly be expected to play a noteworthy part in relief of poverty in the Colony and, by its example, in the neighbouring provinces of China, one of the parts of the world where the provision of contraceptive knowledge and facilities is the sorest necessity.
As Lord Horder said in a letter to the "Times" in October, 1936, "Birth Control clinics are needed to enable parents to space and limit their families. If quantity is lessened quality becomes even more important and any sane population policy must include planned families.”
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Speaking in the House of Lords on November 10th, 1936, Lord Dawson said: "It is a fact that the smaller families of to-day have a higher proportion of fitter children and the mothers of those children are as well as, and in my judgment better than, those of any previous generation."
The League's primary objects are:-(1) the provision of advice for women, and particularly women of the poorest classes, whose health makes pregnancy medically undesirable, and (2) the provision of clinics for women whose circumstances are such that both public policy and their individual good demand family limitation.
Some of those who deplore falling birthrates oppose the spread of contraceptive knowledge. To adopt such a course would be to set the clock back; every new invention brings with it the possibility of abuse. Mere opposition to contraception implies a readiness to force people to become parents against their will. The futility of such an attempt is proved by the admitted increase in criminal abortion--a convincing proof of the lengths to which women will go if knowledge of birth control is denied them. A restriction of such knowledge might lead to a number of unwanted children but would certainly lead to
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a more widespread use of quack methods of family limitation and to an increase in illegal abortion.
Nature has her own rough and ready methods of reducing population when it exceeds what a region can support; they are war, pestilence and famine,--all linked directly with the existence of a population in excess of what a country, in the state of development attained, can provide with the means of life. Contraception aims at keeping population within the bounds dictated by economic development by means more humane, and raising so the standard of population that nature's cruder forces of reduction may cease to operate.
Historical: Considerable interest in the subject having been aroused by the visit to the Colony in March, 1936, of Mrs. Sanger and Mrs. How-Martyn, the Reception Committee which had arranged the agenda of the visitors while in the Colony decided to seize the opportunity thus presented to consider the establishment here of a clinic, with the object of placing a knowledge of modern methods of contraception within reach of the classes of the community most in need of them.
The constituent meeting was held on 1st April, 1936, when the decision was taken to proceed with the formation of a League to put into effect that aim. Thereafter the League's Committee met monthly to settle procedure and the details of its constitution. The terms of the constitution were finally agreed at a meeting on 26th June, and simultaneously the practical work of the clinic began, the details of which are to be found under the medical section of this report.
The Executive Committee has continued to meet monthly to discuss matters of concern to the League. At a meeting held on 7th January, 1937, Dr. Nixon informed the Committee of the success of the League's application for affiliation to the International Birth Control League (of London and New York), to the National Birth Control Association (of London), and to the Birth Control Clinical Research Bureau (of New York).
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