1930 - Population

Population

Benito Mussolini's Italy makes abortion a crime "against the integrity and health of the race," but illegal abortions continue at a rate of more than half a million per year.

A human egg cell is seen for the first time through a microscope (see spermatozoa, 1677). Scientists find that human ovaries generally release maternal eggs 12 to 16 days before menstruation, but about one woman in four will be wildly erratic in her menstrual cycle, and all women will prove to be erratic for a few months after the birth of a child.

Ascheim-Zondek pregnancy tests come into wider use (see 1929): urine or blood from a woman suspected of being pregnant is injected into a female rabbit, which is sacrificed a few days later; if the woman was pregnant, hormones in her urine or blood give the rabbit's ovaries an appearance of pregnancy. Devised by Bernhard Zondek with help from his colleague Louis Ascheim, the tests will eventually be superseded by immunological or immuno-assay methods.

A U.S. court decision extending trademark protection to contraceptive devices encourages production of better quality condoms. Economic depression makes large families increasingly burdensome to breadwinners.

Anglican bishops meeting at the Lambeth Conference accord express at least lukewarm acceptance to contraception (see 1908). Since cervical caps and diaphragms are too costly or difficult for most women to use, contraceptive failure rate is distressingly high; most couples continue to rely on sponges, douches, and coitus interruptus to avoid pregnancy. The birthrate in the U.K. will fall to 15.8 per thousand in the next 2 years, down from 34.1 in 1870-1872 and 24.5 in 1910-1912, but the reasons for the drop will be largely economic.

The encyclical Casti connubii issued December 31 by Pope Pius XI prohibits taking an infant's life to save the mother's (although many cesareans are performed to remove an impacted fetus). It also says, "Any use whatsoever of matrimony exercised in such a way that the [sex] act is deliberately frustrated in its natural power to generate life is an offense against the law of God and of nature, and those who indulge in such are branded with the guilt of a grave sin." The statement of opposition to "artificial fertility regulation" is, in part, a response to the Anglicans' Lambeth Conference position. But the "rhythm" system of birth control favored by the Church is an inadequate form of contraception (critics call it "Vatican roulette") and increasing numbers of Roman Catholics are employing artificial methods of birth control, including abortion.

The world's population approaches 2 billion, up from 1.65 billion in 1900, with much of it in the grip of economic depression (see 1940).

Emigration from the United States exceeds immigration for the first time in history, with thousands of Chicanos being deported to Mexico and thousands of other Americans relocating to the Soviet Union in the belief that capitalism cannot relieve the continuing economic recession.

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