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TR on family and contraception issues:

On motherhood as the true source of progress, Teddy Roosevelt said:

"A more supreme instance of unselfishness than is afforded by motherhood cannot be imagined."

Before an audience of liberal Christian theologians in 1911, he said:

"If you do not believe in your own stock enough to see the stock kept up, then you are not good Americans, you are not patriots, and ... I for one shall not mourn your extinction; and in such event I shall welcome the advent of a new race that will take your place, because you wil have shown that you are not fit to cumber the ground."

On the centrality of the child-rich family to the very existence of the American nation:

"It is in the life of the family, upon which in the last analysis the whole welfare of the nation rests....The nation is nothing but the aggregate of the families within its borders."

On parenthood:

"No other success in life, not being President, or being wealthy, or going to college, or anything else, comes up to the success of the man and woman who can feel that they have done their duty and that their children and grandchildren rise up to call them blessed."

On out-of-wedlock birth versus practiced sterility:

"After all, such a vice may be compatible with a nation's continuing to live, and while there is life, even a life marred by wrong practices, there is a chance of reform.

In another place, on the same subject:

"...[W]hile there is life, there is hope, whereas nothing can be done with the dead."

On the behavior of 90% of those who practice birth control:

"[It is derived] from viciousness, coldness, shallow-heartedness, self-indulgence, or mere failure to appreciate aright the difference between the all-important and the unimportant."

On the "pitiable" child-rearing record of graduates of women's colleges like Vassar and Smith who bore only 0.86 of a child each during their lifetimes:

"Do these colleges teach 'domestic science'?... There is something radically wrong with the home training and school training that produces such results."

""No other success in life, not being President, or being wealthy, or going to college, or anything else, comes up to the success of the man and woman who can feel that they have done their duty and that their children and grandchildren rise up to call them blessed." "

Old Teddy Roosevelt would never be elected today.

"On the behavior of 90% of those who practice birth control:

"[It is derived] from viciousness, coldness, shallow-heartedness, self-indulgence, or mere failure to appreciate aright the difference between the all-important and the unimportant."

Or maybe it's derived by the fact that some of us just *can't* afford another child? You know if I got a job, we probably could, but I'd rather have only 2 children that I can stay home with than have 4 children that have to be in daycare so I can work to help get food on the table. So which do you think is better? Stay at home and stop at 2 kids or get a job just to produce 2 more kids which would mean all 4 would have to be raised by strangers?