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"Small wonder, therefore, if holy writ bears witness that the Divine Majesty regards with greatest detestation this horrible crime, and at times has punished it with death. As St. Augustine notes, intercourse even with one's legitimate wife is unlawful and wicked where the conception of the offspring is prevented. Onan, the son of Juda, did this, and the Lord killed him for it. ... [Genesis 38: 8-10]"
Abortion. Similarly did the encyclical pronounce against divorce, abortion, experimental unions, sterilization, other eugenic practices. Said His Holiness of abortion: ". . . However much we may pity the mother whose health and even life is gravely imperiled in the performance of the duty allotted to her by nature, nevertheless what could ever be a sufficient reason for excusing in any way the direct murder of the innocent? This is precisely what we are dealing with here. Whether inflicted upon the mother or upon the child it is against the precept of God and the law of nature: 'Thou shalt not kill'; the life of each is equally sacred, and no one has the power, not even the public authority, to destroy it."
Those trends which the Pope lamented, he attributed to a growing public conception that man made the marriage institution. ". . . Let it be repeated," said he, ". . . that matrimony was not instituted or restored by man, but by God; not by man were the laws made to strengthen and confirm and elevate it, but by God, the author of nature, and by Christ our Lord by whom nature was redeemed, and hence these laws cannot be subject to any human decrees or to any contrary pact even of the spouses themselves." Toward the end, Pius XI urged: ". . . That in the State such economic and social methods should be set up as will enable every head of a family to earn as much as according to his station in life is necessary for himself, his wife, and for the rearing of his children, for 'the laborer is worthy of his hire.' " !—
Comments on the encyclical were not long in forthcoming. Onetime Judge Benjamin Barr Lindsey, champion of companionate marriage: "The rule proposed by the Pope is respected only by domestic animals." Mrs. Margaret Sanger, birth control apostle: ". . . An insult to the intelligence of women." Rt. Rev. Benjamin Franklin Price Ivins, bishop coadjutor of Milwaukee (Episcopal): "Either birth control is generally practiced in America, or most women are incapable of motherhood." Humanist Charles Francis Potter: ". . . The new generation of Roman Catholics is quietly disregarding the teachings of that Church about birth control. There are fifty-four clinics in the United States giving contraceptive information, and in every one of them the Roman Catholic women come in equal numbers with the Protestants and the Jews. The Pope seems to lay most stress on the statement that contraception is contrary to nature. Then let us respectfully suggest that he be consistent and lay aside his spectacles and stop shaving." Pastor John Haynes Holmes of Manhattan's Community Church: "Here is a tenth-century mind at work on twentieth-century problems. We are never going to get anywhere with marriage or with anything else by going back to St. Augustine."