fertility rate. a missouri physician blamed gynecology as a medical specialty for teaching "young ladies how to avoid conception," claiming that "syringes, sponges, and womb-veils will exterminate the descendants of the mayflower." an editorial in a 1906 issue of texas medical journal asserted that if all physicians were "both civic and christian gentlemen" we should have no criminal abortion cases, no womb veils, no tubes with buttons to close the os, and the anglo-saxon race, instead of being in a decadent condition, would rise in its birth rate and not leave the race problem to the latin-teutonic and colored race. in fact, indications are that black americans also practiced family planning to a comparable degree in the post-slavery period, and several factors seem to have influenced a desire for smaller families among various demographic groups in the 19th century.