The attitude started changing subsequently, as evidenced by the effort made by the British medical professionals in 1921 to appeal to the Anglican Church to reconsider their position on birth control in the light of existing medical knowledge. Till the 1920s, most medical opinion was also against birth control, as it considered it unhealthy and immoral. For the Catholic Church, birth control was illicit and immoral and went against the basic tenet of Christianity. According to them, it devalued the institution and sanctity of marriage and family values. The French delegates tried to maintain a stance of ambivalence though they were wary of contraception on the grounds that it encouraged the idea of seeking sexual pleasure without taking the responsibility of the consequences of the act. The elite, threatened by the growing numbers of commoners, considered birth control as an important means of checking future conflict over their property. The neo-Malthusian position found favour with the elite sentiments on the issue of overpopulation. Neo- Malthusianism thereby reinforced the ideology of private property, individualism and capitalism. In fact, the assumption was that access to commons or availability of resources would give the poor little reason to abstain from having more children. This diverted the debate on population from issues of poverty and unequal access to resources, to birth control per se. The overcrowded industrial slums were identified as sites of moral degeneration. The neo-Malthusian movement therefore was different from conventional Malthusian position on two counts: it stressed on birth control methods and also identified the working class with the problem of overpopulation.
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