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The original publication details are as follows:
Title: Gentlemen of the jury
Author: Gordon, Doris C. (Doris Clifton)
Published: Thomas Avery, New Plymouth, N.Z., 1937
GENTLEMEN OF THE JURY
GENTLEMEN OF THE JURY
BY DORIS C. GORDON M.8., Ch.B., D.P.H., F.R.C.S.E., F.C.0.G., M.B.E.
AND
FRANCIS BENNETT
M.D.
NEW PLYMOUTH, N.Z.
THOMAS AVERY & SONS LIMITED
1937
CONTENTS
Page
Preface 1
I—The Unregistered Company 5
II—The Charge 17
III—The Motive 26
IV—The Medical Witness 42
V—The Legal Witness 81
VI—The Police Witness 95
VII —The State Witness 106
VIII— The Church Witness 116
IX—The Jury Retires 123
Appendix 135
PREFACE
It is a distinct affront to our highly prized respectability to be told that, if abortion deaths are any criterion, New Zealand is harbouring more abortionists in proportion to its numbers than any equally civilized country.
It is, perhaps, a shock to our pride to realize that many jurymen, either by intent or ignorance, condone the activities of criminal abortionists, and that their verdicts are in turn condoned by public opinion. It savours of heresy to suggest that possibly the system of Trial by Jury for this offence has outlived its usefulness; yet everyone who has followed the history of such trials in New Zealand over the last ten years is forced to question the efficiency of the present system.
We are, in fact, losing by illegal abortion twice as many potential citizens annually as were killed yearly during the Great War.
This book does not purport to set forth pleasantries, and those who prefer the bliss of ignorance to disturbing knowledge of current events and customs had best close it forthwith.
The evil of criminal abortion is not a new one; it has existed throughout the ages and it is now common to all Western countries, but it is a more
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1
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GENTLEMEN OF THE JURY
vital evil in New Zealand from a racial point of view because of our small population.
Difficult problems of individual liberty are discussed, and, as far as possible, both sides of the question are considered in order that a just opinion may be formed. In a Democracy public opinion is the law-maker, and this book carries the problem of the extermination of valuable human life to the Appeal Court of Public Opinion. The Gentlemen of the Jury in the Criminal Courts have, in the past, consistently rendered abortion charges futile, and the abortionists wax rich and daring under laws made impotent by the attitude of a proportion of almost every jury.
If laws are obsolete, and due for revision, it is for Public Opinion to say so. Laws honoured more in the breach than in the observance are demoralizing to individual character and inimical to solid British tradition. Hitherto, the jurymen have decided the issues of individual accusations. The public of New Zealand are now asked to constitute a final Court of Appeal, and to decide whether this evil is to receive official toleration or whole-hearted condemnation, coupled with whatever constitutional changes may be necessary to make the law effective.
We realize that many gentlemen of modern juries oppose verdicts of guilt because they believe
PREFACE
14
that the accused was helping some poor woman out of a difficulty. We appreciate their motive, but question how long law and order can be maintained in a community when kindness is permitted to outweigh duty. This book has much to say about women in distress. It weighs the issue of humaneness and private and public responsibility on every page. But if modern jurymen consider that the statutory laws governing punishment for illegal abortion are antiquated, it is for them to say so, instead of rendering the existing laws futile by methodically stonewalling convictions, as they are at present doing.
We are aware, also, that many modern jurors adopt a tolerant attitude towards the abortionist because the man and woman concerned as payer and patient are to escape punishment. Against this argument must be offset the fact that for every abortionist who escapes, either on a verdict of " Not Guilty " or by simple disagreement, still more people will be tempted to enter the nefarious trade, and the increasing number of abortionists openly practising in the community is a daily temptation to men and women to court risks which finally bring them into positions of payer and patient.
We do not attempt to frame the verdict. We endeavour to state the problems, the patients’
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GENTLEMEN OF THE JURY
reasons ‘ for and why ’ fairly and justly, and we leave the verdict to the solid common sense of British democracy.
One thing only we stress before the trial begins. This evil has reached a stage when it must be openly studied by every intelligent man and woman in the Dominion, and some public finding for or against this menace must be reached as a guide to legal, medical, and State authority.
CHAPTER ONE
THE UNREGISTERED COMPANY
I SWEAR by Apollo the Healer . . . and I call all Gods and Goddesses to witness that I will. . . use all ways of medical treatment that shcdl be for the advantage of the sufferers, according to my power and judgment, and will protect them from injury and injustice. Nor will I give to any man, though I be asked for it, any deadly drug, nor will I consent that it should be given. Likewise, I will not procure abortion, but purely and holily I will keep guard over my life and my art . . .
“ And, into whatever houses I enter, I will enter into them for the benefit of the sufferers, departing from all wilful injustice and destructiveness, . . . and whatever, in practice, I see or hear, or even outside practice, which is not right should be told abroad, I will be silent, counting as unsaid what was heard.”
Thus swore Hippocrates, the founder of scientific medicine, 400 years before the Healer of Galilee walked and talked with men.
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GENTLEMEN OP THE JURY
This is the oatk which was administered to medical novitiates of ancient Greece prior to their admission to practice, and, having survived down the centuries and circled the world, is now the basis of all medical ethics. Its principles are embodied in existing statutory laws governing the general behaviour of doctors, but to the majority of doctors the civil law is superfluous, for the Hippocratic oath is written in their hearts; its ideals are their inspiration, and its discipline their pride.
In its application to certain medico-sociological problems of the present day, however, this oath places many general practitioners in a most difficult position.
“ I will use my power and judgment to protect sufferers from injury and injustice,” is a paraphrase, yet the policy of professional silence the oath would appear to exact, permits many women to go or to be taken, unwilling victims, to an abortionist to suffer more or less permanent pain and disability in consequence.
“ I will not procure abortion, but purely and holily I will keep guard over life and my art . . .” The modern disciples of Hippocrates likewise refuse to procure or secure abortion for any reason save grave ill-health on the part of the mother. But the present-day public (having
THE UNREGISTERED COMPANY
18
decided that the abortion of a pregnancy which has eluded birth-control technique is a minor matter of conscience) persistently demands that doctors shall do this operation.
The public demand and the medical refusal create the criminal abortionist’s opportunity.
“ I will depai't from all wilful injustice and destructiveness . . . and whatever I see or hear . . . which is not right should be told I will be silent upon.” Our present-day interpretation is, “ All confidences given me by a patient I will faithfully respect.” Our dilemma of to-day is: “ If others commit wilful injustice and wanton destructiveness, does our duty to the individual patient prohibit a revelation of the practices in general?” If silence means protection for the abortionists and a yearly growing toll of death and disability for women; if it permits the watchdog of public opinion to sleep while the practice of abortion increases by ‘ compound multiplication,’ should we keep silent? Is it possible to speak in general terms of the problem of present-day abortion without breaking faith with individuals?
The following three bona fide summaries of consultations occurring on three consecutive days illustrate the confusion of reasons submitted to a doctor. These, and all following case histories
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are, unfortunately, based on fully authenticated facts.
CASE I—An attractive, ladylike woman entered the surgery, and before she took her seat hastened to announce, " I am feeling generally miserable. I have taken 15/- worth of ergot in the last two weeks without any effect." Questioned as to why she resorted to the ergot, she furnished the following amazing statement: "You see, my mother and all the relatives think I'm mad to have four children already, and if I have five I'm afraid they will think there is something wrong with me and my husband!" The medical advice in this case was that the relatives were the insane group, and that the couple concerned were the only normal and natural people in the clan. This advice, coupled with a promise of every possible comfort in labour, sufficed to persuade this patient cheerfully to carry on the pregnancy.
CASE lI—A lady who knew the world. She started with devious suggested medical reasons which she pleaded necessitated terminating her fourth pregnancy. The ill-health plea failing to convince the doctor, she resorted to the naive argument that as she had already taken so much noxious stuff prior to consulting a doctor she was sure the coming child would be damaged, and as she would not produce a defective child she said it was imperative to remove it. When this argument also failed, the lady became abusive and the consultation terminated abruptly. In four weeks the patient reappeared to seek hospital accommodation for a miscarriage. Experience could supply the missing links in this history; she had been to an abortionist.
THE UNREGISTERED COMPANY
20
CASE lll—The patient accepted the diagnosis with equanimity, quickly buttoned her coat, seized gloves and shopping bag and was obviously more concerned with the back-block housekeeper's long list of shopping to be accomplished before 5.30 p.m., than with the prospects of the coming fourth child. But as she drew on her gloves, she paused, cast an apprehensive glance out of the window to where her husband could be seen sitting at the wheel of a car, and said in her typical colonial slang, " There'll be something doing when I go home and tell him what you say, doctor; he says there are to be no more." The doctor, long versed in such private domestic upheavals, promptly replied, " But times are better now, and you are just the type of woman to be having babies. You know you are very fond of your children, and babies are no trouble to a bright, placid woman like you." " Yes," said the patient, " I'd rather like another —but, you see, we are on a soldier's farm. The State takes all the money and only allows us £8 a month to live on. The farm is eight miles down a mud road which they won't metal. I live up in the village for the kiddies' schooling. It's inconvenient living in two rooms of someone-else's house and he " —a nod indicated the driver at the wheel —" is trying to save to build a house in the village. Besides he says he's too old to be bothered with more children."
The doctor suggested that as the husband was equally responsible for the domestic problem under consideration he could not be very irate when it came to that intimate talk the wife was dreading, and felt sure the lady’s tact and maternal instincts would quickly overcome paternal prejudices. Confidence bom of experience for once was wrong. Within forty-eight hours he received the following letter:
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GENTLEMEN OF THE JURY
Rural Mail Bag No. —,
Ist October, 1938.
Dear Doctor,
I have explained what you told me to Mr. XYZ and he is determined not to go any further with this. Could you, or would you, do this operation for me? Otherwise he will take me to some person who makes a practice of that kind of thing. I want to go somewhere where I will get the necessary attention after. Will you let me know as soon as possible if you will do this for me and what the cash price would be? Anxiously awaiting your reply,
Yours truly,
XYZ."
The usual cases where women themselves wish to court these risks are sordid enough, but common chivalry as well as medical tradition said that this woman had to be protected by one means or another.
The doctor turned up a recent ruling of the Director-General of Health regarding the physician's release from the principle of silence if he knew that the patient was either very young or an unwilling victim to an illegal operation, and decided to use this as a threat if he could not bring the husband to see reason by methods of persuasion.
His letter of reply read that he could not contemplate the operation, and firmly advised the couple to abandon the idea, as it was both
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THE UNREGISTERED COMPANY
dangerous and criminal, and he urged them to see him personally at their earliest opportunity, when they could all three discuss together what could be done for the best.
At the resulting triangular consultation he pointed out that the XYZ’s were healthy people, their progeny had a right to live, and it was not his mission to extinguish life. He dropped the gentle hint that, moreover, having seen Mrs. XYZ through three normal confinements, it might now be his duty to see that she was not forced into consenting to this criminal operation.
He pointed out that their poverty was only relative and that Mr. XYZ himself had existed and thrived as a child with the nearest school twenty miles away. To emphasize the fact that operation by an illegal abortionist was highly dangerous he quoted a case, the summary of which was:
CASE IV—Some years ago he himself had been called to a general hospital to give an anaesthetic for what was supposed to be a natural miscarriage. The patient had been unduly apprehensive in going under the anaesthetic, constantly asking if she and her little children at home would be all right. Once the operation started, serious complications and earlier damage were found. The patient died fifty minutes afterwards without regaining consciousness and ten minutes after her death her brother rushed into hospital, crying vehemently, " I don't care who
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GENTLEMEN OF THE JURY
I tell; I’ll tell the truth! My sister has been murdered; her husband compelled her to go to an abortionist.” There was the usual inquest, arrest, trial, and no conviction.
The essence of the story from Mr. XYZ’s point of view, said the doctor, was that nothing gave those little children back their mother.
After apparently dismissing the couple, the doctor called Mr. XYZ back from the gate, and stated calmly and kindly, “ I want to tell you privately that medical tradition compels no silence upon me if I find that you have forced this operation upon your wife unwillingly. Anyway you are a lucky man to have a wife like that—don’t do anything crazy.”
The unconscious life that was the storm-centi - e of the XYZ drama had several months to go before it attained to the status of conscious life. It was, for the time being, both sub judice and sub medice. In other words, the economizing ex-soldier wondered how far he could ignore the irate family doctor and proceed with his destructive plans, and the doctor wondered how far he could rely upon the law to support his threats if destruction was procured. Let us, however, now consider some of the issues involved in Mrs. XYZ’s letter.
Firstly: Mrs. XYZ had no intention of disputing the decree of her husband, and would have broken
THE UNREGISTERED COMPANY
13
the civil law rather than lose favour in his sight. The intervention of the doctor, however, provided a loophole of escape for her.
Secondly: Economists and legislators must ask themselves if the scale of remuneration for Mr. XYZ was adequate. Is this a case where we should blame the man for his illegal intentions or blame the machine that works the man?
Thirdly: This woman who admitted that she wanted another child realized that she was about to undergo an illegal operation more dangerous than childbirth. She hoped, in her heart of hearts, that her family doctor would do it so that she would be assured of skill and good surroundings for the after-nursing. Obviously, she knew all about the so-called ‘ minor operations ’ performed in secret and degrading situations by veiled abortionists who often turn the patient away half an hour later with the sage advice, “ Go fifty miles away and if you get bad send for a doctor.” She dreaded the unknown abortionist. She dreaded the intervening days between the abortionist and the doctor, for she knew, in all probability, that some duly qualified operator would be necessary to relieve her of the putrid poisonous mass that would soon be all that remained of her promised child.
Fourthly: She doubted whether the family
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doctor would do the operation, but hinted that cash in advance would be available. Why does the conscientious doctor refuse the request, the critic will ask; why is he hide-bound by an antiquated old oath? The reason lies in sheer common sense, which says that the standard of Hippocrates must be the standard of to-day. Experience of human nature warns us that if we once started terminating pregnancies for every trivial whim or reason presented we would soon be terminating civilization. We are here to heal and treat; to protect life and prolong it, not to extinguish it. Infants are apt to ‘ cry for the moon.’ Men and women are apt to clamour to doctors to extinguish sun, moon, and the light of life itself. Both desire what is not good for them, and neither know what they really want. The pregnancies which couples do not want this year are usually the joy and light of their homes twelve months later. It is just as well, therefore, that our profession is conservative and adamant as regards terminating pregnancy for healthy couples, else short-sighted, misguided humanity would soon be bereft of all its music, its laughter and its glory.
Fifthly: Mr. XYZ would take his wife to ‘ someone who makes a practice of this kind of thing.’ Note the calm way in which it was implied that people making a practice of illegal
THE UNREGISTERED COMPANY
26
abortion could easily be found. Some few respectable people may wonder how a settler eight miles along a mud road from a metaphorical nowhere would know of people making a practice of abortion, and how he would proceed to find them. The answer, we regret to say, is that the Company of Abortionists (Unlimited) who trade in this country do everything in a business-like method except register the company, issue certificates of efficiency, and advertise in neon-light lettering. They have no need for expensive advertising. The newspapers, reporting their trials and their verdicts of “ Not Guilty,” obligingly do this gratis for them.
Some three years ago a young woman consulted a doctor in a Taranaki town, entered the establishment of an abortionist in Auckland, and finally travelled 200 miles back to a provincial hospital before she died of peritonitis. At the subsequent trial it was stated that when the deceased sought admission to the Auckland menage she was told that a bed would not be available till one of the four or five girls, inmates at that time, vacated a bed. The home was run by a man and his wife. The male accused received a relatively short term of imprisonment; the female accused was left at liberty in the community to carry on her career or to reform as she chose. Can such information
GENTLEMEN OF THE JUBY
27
be spread by the Press without people realizing that, in an emergency, similar resources are available to them?
Moreover, doctors, part of whose work it is to heal people when they have desperately or deliberately made havoc of their lives, and who therefore work on the outer fringe of the evil ring, know that every abortionist has his or her subagents, and wholesale suppliers still further in the background. They all work in league, recommend one another, and lie zestfully in one another’s defence. Experience suggests that a coterie exists between certain suppliers of contraceptives and ‘ regulators ’ and the abortionists. If the first by chance fails, more money will be made by advising women to try the second. If this also fails, the patient is passed on up the lucrative ladder to the abortionist. As Nature is desperately keen to re-create the species, and as modern civilization makes children an increasingly difficult problem, this coterie of Abortionists & Co. have tapped a gold-mine of wealth unparalleled almost in modern industry.
CHAPTER TWO
THE CHARGE
Science put a dangerous weapon into humanity’s hands when it gave it modern facilities for birth control, for the thousands and millions of individuals who make up civilization lack the requisite balance and judgment to handle this knowledge with discretion and a sense of duty. One would expect unpleasant reactions if one gave a nine-year-old boy a plug of gelignite for a Christmas present; and science gave humanity an equally dangerous gift at a period when the rank and file of people had not the mental capacity to handle it with respect and caution. Birth-control information, which was meant to benefit the few, has become a way of escape from duty for the majority. Individually and collectively the best elements of civilization are hastening to exterminate themselves with their new-found knowledge.
It is not the purpose of this book to maintain that birth control is at all times wrong. There are times and occasions when it is right and justifiable. It is worth remembering, however, that the abuse of birth control knowledge in New Zealand has already reduced this country to a
2
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GENTLEMEN OF THE JURY
29
dangerous state of stagnation, and, coupled with the rising tide of abortions, threatens in a very few years to extinguish its white people. Illegal abortion, also, is now conducted on a more ‘ scientific ’ basis than it was in the Middle Ages, but this does not make it any the less criminal or mitigate its disastrous effect upon the civic and national weal.
The Government Statistician of this country, with his finger on the true pulse of national prosperity and vitality, tells us that the birth rate has fallen lower than ever in 1936. The fall does not startle us, because we are used to his stereotyped phrases which, year after year, refer to the falling birth rate. It might convey a different meaning to us if he said that every male over the age of twenty-one in this Dominion now has to his credit only seven-tenths of a child. In a natural community the majority of men over twenty-one would be fathers of several children. What has modern civilization, with its competition, its birthcontrol propaganda, and its unlimited company of abortionists, done to us that every adult male now has less than one child apiece to his posterity record ?
Already we have shown that husbands, not wives, sometimes demand the abortion, and the cases quoted are by no means isolated instances
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THE CHARGE
of masculine selfishness. Instances could be quoted where, with three existing children, the timorous wives have been forced to visit an abortionist for the termination of two and four other pregnancies respectively. Hasty critics blame women alone for the falling birth rate. It is one of the contentions of this book that the problem concerns men and women equally.
How are we to treat these disturbing problems of scientific birth control and scientifically conducted illegal abortion? Shall we treat them as honoured guests, or shall we hound them out as dangerous menaces? Shall we try to check them, or shall we ignore them?
The primary purpose of this book is to seek a decision on these problems from the Appeal Court of Public Opinion, and we ask readers to weigh all the coming evidence in the light of the lesson which history teaches, and has reiterated unceasingly during the past few years, that we can no longer live as individuals. Into our care has been given the sacredness and mystery of human life, and Nature will insist on a reckoning.
"... and those who would have been, Their sons, they gave, their immortality," wrote Rupert Brooke early in the Great War.
Of the incidence of birth control we have no reliable statistics to guide us. But statistics are
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not necessary since practically every deliberate abortion represents a case where contraceptives have been neglected or have failed. The rate of one reflects the rate of the other. In the main, contraceptives are effective. The abortion rate is high and therefore the contraceptive rate must be enormous.
This is not to be wondered at since contraceptives provide a facile method of removing the main obstacle to gratification of the sex impulse. They can be purchased in any town in New Zealand. Some chemists ‘ specialize ’ in them. There is no official ban on their sale or their advertisement. Manufacturing firms vie with each other in attractive productions, and doctors and chemists are besieged with literature about them. They are cheap in price to the public but their cost to the State may be national bankruptcy.
The widespread use of preventives is always associated with the name of Marie Stopes, but it should not be forgotten that her pioneer work was among the working women in the slums, and was intended not to prevent families but to limit them when for reasons of finance, health, or heredity this seemed advisable.
The motive was worthy but the results were disastrous. The movement spread, and contraception became like a fire that had got out of
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32
control. The wrong people acquired the knowledge. It was applied most effectively by those with resources of money and intelligence, and so the Western world has been denied the very type of children which it badly needs.
As contemporaries, we do not doubt the sincerity of Marie Stopes, but we question the regard in which she will be held by the historian of the future.
When we come to study the incidence of illegal abortion we are denied accurate statistics, but several efforts have been made in New Zealand during 1936 to compute their number.
A committee recently set up to consider the medical aspects of abortion in Great Britain says: “ There is no means of assessing accurately the extent of the practice of criminal abortion. It is notorious that, where there has been any criminal interference, expert advice may be called only in the event of untoward symptoms developing.”
This statement exactly coincides with the situation in New Zealand. Every doctor (specialists excepted) encounters many women who, having requested him ‘to give something or do something ’ to terminate a pregnancy, and having instead received some sound advice on the illegality of the request, the dangers of interference, and the reward of carrying to term, retire with a
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semblance of gratitude, only to return bright and smiling, some three weeks later, to announce complacently that they miscarried easily, all went well, and that they now feel splendid. Some fifty per cent of them state unblushingly that they “ did an extra-heavy wash ” or “ pushed the lawnmower.” The other fifty per cent waste no words on excuses. The important thing is that such a large proportion of them get off scot-free, or, as the British Medical Commission scientifically expresses it, “ without untoward symptoms developing.”
Medical opinion agrees that almost all feverish miscarriage cases follow interference, and many non-feverish cases also.
Many doctors suggest that a fair computation of the New Zealand incidence could be obtained by reckoning that for every septic abortion death thirty more women occupy hospital beds, public or private, on account of septic miscarriage; moreover, they agree that for every feverish case admitted to hospital, approximately two cases are treated by doctors outside hospital, and two more cases never consult a doctor, simply reporting, on the next occasion they meet him, “ Oh, I miscarried that pregnancy soon after I saw you and there was no need to call you in.” The computation of thirty seriously ill septic abortion cases for
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THE CHARGE
every death is endorsed by an analysis of the New Plymouth Hospital figures for the last five years:
Admissions for miscarriage 302
Feverish amongst these 105
Deaths (all of them feverish) 3
The incidence of deaths is definitely one in thirty-five feverish cases, or one death to thirtyfour recoveries. Of these 302 cases, 105 undoubtedly represent interference, and we do not know how many of the cases presenting haemorrhage, or putrid discharge but no fever, were also due to illegal interference.
Now, these figures allow us to make a reasonable computation of the number of illegal abortions occurring annually in this Dominion. During the year 1934, forty-two New Zealand women were certified as dying from septic abortion. Over a period of five years, an average of New Plymouth Hospital figures shows that for every woman dying thirty-four were treated for septic (feverish) abortion. For every feverish miscarriage that entered hospital we can compute that four more remained in their homes with or without medical attention. Our sum would then read thus:
42 X 34 X 4 = 5,712.
Then we must remember that very likely every year a few fatal cases of peritonitis following
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abortion are camouflaged on the death certificate as peritonitis after appendicitis, etc. Early in 1936, Magistrate Bartholomew uncovered one such kindly, but misleading certificate of death of a single woman in a respectable walk of life, and we have reason to fear that a few such cases each year have evaded record as abortion deaths.
If we compute that in 1934 only three such cases were missed, then our computation reads:
45 X 34 X 4 = 6,120.
It must be conceded that as this computation of ours accepts all the above-mentioned 197 women who were not febrile as possible natural miscarriages our computation is decidedly on the conservative side. The New Plymouth Hospital figures receive endorsement from those of the Christchurch Hospital for the year 1935:
Total cases admitted for miscarriage 213
Total septic (feverish) cases 86
Deaths 2
Incidence of death in feverish cases is,
therefore, 1 in 42.
It is worth noticing in passing, as an instance of the increase of abortion, that the Christchurch Hospital admitted 213 miscarriage cases in 1935, 167 in 1930, and only 120 in 1925.
Other doctors compute the incidence of wilful abortion in this Dominion at a still higher figure than 6,120 per annum.
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THE CHARGE
We present our figures without apology, and, we believe, fairly. We make no wild claims for their exact accuracy, but we do claim that they are not exaggerated. We would be happier if they were exaggerated, for the deductions are alarming.
Last year just under 24,000 children were permitted to be born in this Dominion and 6,000 or more, we fear, were wilfully aborted. In other words, approximately one-fifth of last year’s production of young New-Zealanders were lost before they were born.
This, then, is the Charge, the challenge of this book, and no one worthy of his or her civic rights can ignore the challenge. We are losing—generally killing—young New-Zealanders at twice the rate they were killed during the Great War*; and, as will be shown in Chapter Four, we are losing proportionately more potential mothers through septic abortion than any equally civilized country.
Official figures—
New-Zealanders killed in action, 1914-1918 10,870
New-Zealanders died of wounds, 1914-1918 3,950
14,820
This number represents a rate of 3,200 deaths per year for four years, or less for four and a half years, which was the approximate duration of the war.
CHAPTER THREE
THE MOTIVE
I.
" Modern woman is a conflict of forces never known before," wrote Benjamin Kidd in the year 1920. One wonders what words he would find to describe the conflict-confounded creature which represents modern woman as we find her in the year 1937?
The emancipation of women will undoubtedly take its place ultimately in the world’s history as one of the major events affecting human destiny, comparable to the Renaissance and the Reformation. The revolution was drastic and sudden, and it was natural that those participating should be intoxicated with their success.
Up till fifty years ago it was not uncommon for young ladies to stay at home, jealous of and carping at each other, waiting for anyone in the guise of a husband to turn up to give them the status of married respectability so essential in those days. Under such circumstances, of course, they were prepared to accept a nursery full of children as fast as they could breed them as a
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THE MOTIVE
necessary corollary to the husband and social security.
History has lost sight of the first rebels, who, fifty years ago, slackened their corsets, abandoned their crinolines, and walked boldly down the street at 8.30 a.m. in search of a career. Their own sex railed at them, but when it was discovered that they had a flair for business and could command good salaries as well as personal respect they became bolder.
They promptly refused uncertain offers of matrimony and told their amazed parents that they would marry only when love and mutual respect made their matrimonial prospects honourable and auspicious. Thus far posterity must congratulate these enterprising young women upon their sound common sense. They were healthier and happier in their new independence, rosier and more robust as a result of their daily excursions to and from business, and as capable business women they no longer needed the psychical compensation of swooning. When they did risk the marriage altar, the vows exchanged were more honourable pledges of mutual fidelity, as there was now no compulsion on tearful and ignorant brides to give themselves into the keeping of the first eligible man who proffered matrimony.
All this was good, but as soon as the rebels
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realized that their salaries covered more than the essentials of existence, their next reaction was to refuse to marry the men of their choice until the latter could provide as many luxuries for two as they could now secure for themselves. Thus the first result of feminine emancipation was a rising standard of living.
A better standard of living was also a good thing, but carried to excess, the idea necessitated deferment of marriage until men’s salaries were adequate to women’s new ideas. Women had no quarrel with matrimony. In fact, something bigger than their own volition made them yearn at heart for home and children. But the scales were heavily weighted with the new liking for independence, the zest of business and the thrills of responsibility.
Modern women’s determination not to rush into matrimony was hardened by their family histories. Their mothers in middle age were often brokendown, florid, figureless women, mentally patronized by their husbands and pitied by their progeny. The inevitable conversation of mothers and grandmothers was the trivial chatter of personal reminiscences. They would tell how, on weddingdays, they had “ prayed that Almighty God would be merciful and not send them too many children,” the recitals usually ending with the triumphant
THE MOTIVE
40
note, “ The good God had heard their prayers and sent only ten children ”; or else, having sent fourteen children, “ He had beneficently recalled five of them.”
Daughters and granddaughters had neither this simple faith nor direct fatalism; instead they had keen minds sharpened on the whetstone of business. They thought of the present weekly salary as against the prospective biennial arrival of a baby. They weighed the issue and decided, all things considered, that it would be wise to defer marriage until they were at least twentyfive. Thus the second result of their emancipation was late marriage.
The revolt now became a scramble for the spoils. Parents of the rising generation decided that their daughters also should have education to equip them for similar ambitious careers, and so the competitive race for juveniles began. Girls, fitted or unfitted by Nature for competitive schooling, were crammed through intensive courses of English and commercial methods. In view of the fact that they would probably be home-makers some day, they had to add to their overburdened curricula Home Arts and a reasonable knowledge of housekeeping. If they flagged in this educational marathon they were egged on by anxious mothers, themselves relics of the Victorian period,
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who drove in the spur “ If you don’t qualify to earn your own living, you’ll end up as a household drudge or have to make a poor marriage, in which case you’ll still be a domestic drudge.”
The third result, therefore, was that household help soon vanished off the twentieth century stage and nurseries were perforce reduced to workable numbers.
In 1913 appeared Mrs. Pankhurst and the Franchise. Symbolically, it was for women the raising of the flag of victory over the field they had won. No longer were they to be regarded by the State as secluded, brainless breeders of children; the franchise was ‘ recognition of their ability and judgment, and placed them on a par with males.’ They now had a voice in the destiny of the nation —but not in the manner they imagined. With bold strokes in polling-booths they proceeded to ‘ rule the world ’ more effectively, they thought, than did their grandmothers who merely rocked those wearisome cradles. Many women, manned and single, found vent for their latent organizing powers in election campaigns. In the intervals between elections and war service they kept themselves in a turmoil of activity for the sheer joy of it, and would organize anything from a garden party to a jumble sale to help a day nursery or provide a seaside excursion for
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poor children. They thought they were doing excellent social work, and so they were, but the fact remains, social service teas substituted for personal maternal duties.
In our synopsis of the revolt we must observe that a curious feminine trait at this stage revealed itself. Modern emancipated women pride themselves on their intelligence and originality, whereas many of them have no individuality at all. What luxuries one has, the other thinks she must have also, to save her self-respect.
Let us visualize an emancipated matron, Mrs. A., whose friends have wireless sets, motor cars and fur coats. Mrs. A. will not rest until she has them also; and her husband, too, is equally obsessed with the idea of keeping pace with his business colleagues in acquiring the so-called ' necessities ' of life and in spending in odds and ends enough to pay the wages of an afternoon nursemaid.
The commercial world will never leave any human urge ungratified for long, so at this juncture arrives that modern convenience, the Time-payment System. With her husband’s ready consent, Mrs. A. buys a bedroom suite and a lavishly upholstered sitting-room suite— ‘£s down and only 5/- per week.’ While arranging the furniture, Mrs. A. muses: ‘ Middle-class grand-
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mother might have been happy with her love-in-a-cottage romance and cheerfully put up with a boxing and cretonne wardrobe till her family was grown up, but things were different in those days,’ and so Mrs. A. decides, the fifth result, to regulate her children to her furnishings, or, more precisely, to the monthly calls of the time-payment collector. If conscience gives a dying prick she silences it with the excuse, ‘Anyway, Grandmother would not have had twelve if she had only known how to dodge them!”
From the luxury of the chesterfield Mrs. A. looks across at Mr. A. and finds in him a still stronger reason why she cannot have many children. She thinks he is possessed of personality and has prospects. He will do well and rise in life, she thinks, and resolves to rise with him. She is aware of the incessant clamour, ' Go about, widen your mental horizon, never get in a rut,' and she decides that she must limit the family so that she can maintain the social and mental pace with him.
Mrs. A. is by nature very fond of children, but four or five of these in a maidless home would keep her grinding away, day and night, year in and year out, degenerating physically and mentally into a jaded mother and an uninteresting wife. Instinct tells her that this would be dangerous.
3
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THE MOTIVE
If her husband rises in the social scale while she stagnates they will be Poles apart at middle age; and this emancipated woman, having tasted the joys of liberty and ' individuality,' is not willing thus to jeopardize the perpetual companionship and quiet proud approval of the mate she has chosen.
Our grandmothers were doomed to live in mental grooves. The annual or biennial arrival of babies made life to them a succession of inevitabilities. They questioned neither their husband’s comings and goings nor their social ascendencies.
Modern woman has decreed that her life is also to be a succession of ascendencies. Mrs. A. has sacrificed a good position, good salary and high prospects for Mr. A. and ‘ what she has she holds,’ and where he goes she goes.
She visualizes Mr. A. ten years hence. She knows the thousand-year-old tradition that males in the propinquity of the other sex are woeful confusions of indeterminateness, and she knows that many of her co-rebels are, alas, carrying the gospel of feminine freedom too far! At present she has implicit trust in Mr. A. But in case the passage of years and the intoxicating wine of success should reveal weak spots in his armour she decides it will be well to keep pace with him,
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keep beside him, and most important of all, remain attractive to him.
For the gratification of her maternal instincts, Mrs. A. would not begrudge the social restrictions requisite for the gestation period of three or four children. She could manage these at intervals and yet keep pace with her husband. But as capable maids are unknown in the type of home visualized here, Mrs. A. shudders at the prospect of fifteen years of unaided nursery duty, during which time it would be impossible for her to keep step with Mr. A. in his social climb.
Moreover, if she did have four childz-en, would Mr. A. even make an effort to stay home two or three nights a week and mind them, while she got away from the twenty-four-hour-a-day treadmill of responsibility which represents modern maidless motherhood?
Would he be willing to forgo his car and walk to his office so that she might have the assistance of even a morning maid to lighten her domestic cares?
Would he leave her alone, in the bosom of a dear, but trying family, while he took annual holidays in the happy hunting-grounds so dear to males? Would not her friends outstrip her in the race, and would she not lose most of her attractiveness—her most powerful weapon?
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If she reared children and by her sacrifice of freedom had a double claim on the rewards of fidelity, mutual respect and life-long companionship, would she not be less likely than ever to get these rewards?
At the age of forty might she not find herself in a ballroom, sitting lonely amongst the wallflowers, watching her beloved Mr. A. frequently leading out some less conscientious female?
Unfortunately, the din of passing traffic, the static of the wireless, and the clamour of ambition drowns the whisper of that ‘ still small voice ’ which urges, “ You will hold your husband better through all the coming years if you are the mother of several of his children.” ... So Mrs. A. sighs, and makes the decision that hers is to be a onechild or a childless home.
Her husband buys the contraceptives. Now and then they fail. For a panic-stricken month she thrashes over the old arguments again and makes the same decision. She goes to an abortionist and the child is destroyed. For one reason or another it happens thus about twenty times every day in New Zealand.
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11.
We are not pleading extenuating circumstances —some of the gentlemen of the jury have consistently found the extenuating circumstances for themselves and have applied them, time without number, to the annulment of the law and to the detriment of the nation's cradle roll. But we do ask all those in authority anxious about our birth rate to consider the many conflicts which perplex modern women, and before condemning them, to plan some practical measures to assist them.
Mrs. A., of course, is only a type; the details may vary as widely as human nature varies, but the broad background of motive remains the same. A later chapter will give evidence of definite sociological and medical conflicts which present entirely different claims for consideration.
Meanwhile, we submit that Mrs. A. is a misguided young woman ‘as much to be pitied as censured.’ On her wedding-day she re-acted the drama of Shakespeare’s Casket Scene. Inside the simple ring her far-seeing eyes deciphered the neat inscription, “ What modern woman chooseth me must give and hazard all she hath.” She chose, she gave, she hazarded all for Mr. A., and now she proposes, at all costs, to hold him.
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She has a well-appointed home, perhaps a car, and is imbued with modern ideas of luxury within and without the home. She moves in a circle where smart women sneer at the ‘ stupid ’ ones who permit themselves to be encumbered by children. She has not the forethought to discern that when the inevitable happens, when the wrinkles come and the bloom goes, and when her mirror and her world tell her she is ‘ past tense,’ there is one, and only one, recompense— posterity.
Not without reason she thinks, if she risks oft-repeated maternity, that the world will judge her at fifty to be a mental cabbage, and coldshoulder her as it cold-shouldered poor reminiscent grandmother. She has fearsome ideas of the throes of labour, and, as will be detailed later, the medical profession has not yet adequately calmed these fears. She believes that her figure will go and her pelvic health will be damaged if she has many children. We admit these two possibilities, but submit that maternity confers many benefits resulting in added beauty. Diplomatic medicine has been too reticent about these benefits. No authoritative voice has told poor misguided Mrs. A. that her endocrine system will be greatly improved by a reasonable number of children or that she will be younger at forty-five if she is the mother of three or four than she
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will be if she permits her endocrine clock to run down by refusing it its rightful stimulation.
Mrs. A., unfortunately, has been bred in an age when extreme personal liberty is the watchword. She claims that, like men, she is free to do and be what she likes. But in this one matter of children she is still the custodian of the race. Man can say, “ I am the Master of my Fate and the Captain of my Soul ”; but not so woman. She cannot be a cheap imitation of man without losing the nucleus of her charm and the subtlety of her sex. Man sees in her the perpetual flame of life, the refining spirit of sacrifice potential in childhood, actual in maturity, fulfilled in old age, and therefore tenders chivalry as his tribute.
Marie Stopes's birth-control propaganda has had tragic repercussions of its own for which the feminine revolt is not to blame. Prior to the publication of her books, middle-class couples had evolved some system of limiting their families, generally speaking, to a workable number of five or six. These were the type of people, par excellence, to breed a virile stock. When Marie Stopes's crusade of mechanical birth control became known it offered these women, already harassed by the problem of maidless families and increasing costs and competition, a temptation
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they were unable to withstand, and families of two and one became the fashion.
Indiscriminate distribution of her literature brought the knowledge of birth control to the single and adolescent. Many engaged couples now accept it as an alternative to early marriage. Adolescents reading the literature that abounds, think that they also can play with fire and not get their fingers burnt. Worst result of all, there crept into feminine psychology the thought, ‘ If it is not wrong to prevent it, is it wrong to abort it?’ From 1914 to 1925 women fought a losing battle in deciding the ethics of birth control, and during this period, if they ever requested an abortifacient they crept into one’s consultingrooms with the air of a thief or a murderer. From 1925 onwards they accepted birth control as an essential part of civilization, and began to order an abortion to clean up a trifling paternal or maternal carelessness as calmly as they would order a tube of toothpaste.
No one can say that Women’s Franchise has turned the scales in directions adverse to any country’s weal, save in this one respect: that Franchise, Freedom and Babies do not harmonize. In fact, there is strong evidence that the influence of women’s votes in democracy is fostering just and humane legislation. We must admit that, in
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general terms, Woman has made an extremely good job of her emancipation. From book-keeping to aviation there is nothing she cannot master. There is only one calling in which modern Woman has failed—a calling in which poor despised grandmother succeeded—the task of keeping the cradles reasonably full. Our grandmothers begat their tens and twelves, despite the vicissitudes of log-huts, food shortages, low produce prices, few domestics, no organized maternity services, no Plunket Society, no State education, no school dental services, and none of the modern luxuries which smooth the path of parenthood to-day.
One of the tragedies outlined in this book is that while modern women are still as fond of children as were their grandmothers, many thousands of them, especially of the virile middle class, are limiting their families to two, one or none.
According to Benjamin Kidd, the whole progress and hope of civilization is based on the ability for self-sacrifice and the spirit of renunciation. Modern Woman has spent half a century striving for self-realization and self-attainment, but every passing decade sees her vision more warped, and finds her more willing to deceive herself with specious reasons why she cannot have more than one or two children. Some have already
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52
reached the pitiable level when they are willing to resort to any abortion debasement to preserve their ‘ freedom.’
While Woman has been getting further and further away from her essential duty, and while her male flatterers have been condoning her revolt and finding her more interesting as a hybrid-cross than as a mother, our legislators have imagined that modern women could be governed by precisely the same medical and civil laws as modelled the behaviour of their grandmothers. They might as well bind the tiger with cotton. The majority of modern women emphatically announce that they are not going to submit to oft repeated maternity. The legislators express disapproval, but they know that they have not the support of massed public opinion. There is, indeed, no massed public opinion, for it is a distasteful subject.
The problem has to be tackled from the human point of view. The biological fact that human reproduction depends on the female cannot be altered. We applaud women’s emancipation, but only to the degree that Woman can never outwit her destiny. Motherhood is the one true sense in which she is both the servant and the warden of humanity.
CHAPTER FOUR
THE MEDICAL WITNESS
i.
The inclusion of abortion deaths in international maternal mortality figures is a statistical misnomer, for abortion deaths represent women’s destiny defeated and maternal deaths represent the price paid for that destiny fulfilled.
Though the inclusion is misleading it is overcome by speaking of:
(a) Total maternal mortality—i.e., abortion deaths included.
(b) Genuine maternal mortality—i.e., abortion deaths excluded.
For some years now, eight countries —Holland, England and Wales, Ireland, Canada, U.S.A., Australia, Scotland and New Zealand—have agreed to this system of assessing deaths associated with the reproductive function, and their statistics now afford information as to how far the emancipation of modern women spells racial suicide to the nations they adorn.
In 1927, the group of doctors concerned specially with maternal welfare in this Dominion, feeling
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that the inclusion of abortion deaths was misleading to the public and unjust to the medical and nursing professions, asked the Government Statistician to record them separately in his yearly return.
This was done, and the result shows a marked rise in the number of abortion deaths, from fourteen in the year 1927, to forty-two in the year 1934. It must be noted here that this rise began three years before the slump of 1930.
The following graph shows how, in 1932, New Zealand had the highest “ death rate from abortion ” of the above eight countries keeping parallel statistics. The level was maintained in 1933 and rose to a much greater height in 1934. What, then, is the attitude of the medical profession to this slaughter, and to the general incidence of abortion ?
Here we would stress that the following comments are the personal views of the writers. We have no authority to act as the mouthpiece of the profession, even though we believe that, in the main, only orthodox opinions are expressed.
The attitude of the medical and nursing professions is that while they deplore this wastage of life more deeply than any other profession can do, and while they hold themselves responsible for all true maternal deaths, they yet refuse to take
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56
the responsibility for septic abortion deaths. They have the trying task of treating these cases when they come in extremis into the wards of public hospitals or beg shelter in the seclusion of private hospitals. The doctors and nurses tax their ingenuity and their strength in trying to save these people, sacrifice sleep and valuable surgery hours to the supervision of transfusions, and steep themselves in an unpalatable and unprofitable atmosphere of sepsis; and having done all this as a matter of duty, they feel that they can wash their hands of responsibility—for the mischief was done before ever the patient came to them. They can ‘ wash their hands ’ but it is a question whether they can placate professional conscience by adopting a mental attitude which says, “ If people will do these things, our only duty is to nurse and heal them; we are neither detectives nor reformers.”
The question is this: Should the medical profession tell the community what is going on in its midst? Many doctors believe that no good can be done by telling. Others, seeing no practical remedy, think it best to put the telescope to a blind eye. Others hope that some revival of a religious or moral nature will cause a swing-back of the pendulum toward a stricter mass morality; and, again, others fear to express the evil which
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they know exists in case the expression leads to radical socialistic legislation unpalatable to the better-class Briton. The profession accepts the ruling that, for the public weal, maternal deaths should be certified and notified. Is it logical then to remain silent about ante-natal infanticide?
Some doctors have said, " We cannot debate this problem, it is out of our sphere." Actually they mean, " This problem is so thorny, so fraught with revolutionary possibilities that, not knowing what ought to be done, we will do nothing." It is easy to take refuge behind the multi-headed aspects of this evil, and say, " The problem belongs as much to legal, religious and sociological authorities as it belongs to the medical profession; therefore, we had best keep silence." But this policy of silence has gone on too long.
Two organizations at least —the Trained Nurses' Association which last year asked for advice as to how this evil could be mitigated in NewZealand, and the New Zealand Obstetrical Society, which recently asked for a Government Commission to investigate the problem—are acting in the best traditions of modern medicine, which works on the principle that accurate diagnosis must precede treatment. We cannot prevent disease until we know its etiology, its bacteriology, and so on; and we cannot lessen the abortion
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evil until we fearlessly examine its causes and incidence in this Dominion.
Our Health Department, our school nursing service, our Plunket Society and our ante-natal clinics are based on the principle that Prevention is better than Cure. Are the medical and nursing professions now to fold their hands passively and say, “ There is no remedy for the abortion evil ”? Are they to gull the public with a policy of silence when the work of the wards is impeded by the accumulation of pelvic peritonitis cases, when the deaths from abortion are rising annually and the birth rate is steadily dropping? Does any good ever come from refusing to face facts?
Doctors and nurses know more of the ravages of the abortion evil in New Zealand than any other group of people, but it is an unpleasant and difficult problem, and one not easily discussed. Individually and collectively, there is the temptation to avoid facing the amazing fact that, in despite of the law of the Church and the State, murder in its modern form of criminal abortion is being practised on every hand and amongst all ranks of society.
Is there any evidence to support the statement of the increasing frequency of abortion? There is much.
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1. Anyone who has been in general practice for a period of twenty years or more knows that to confine a single woman in these days is a much less frequent experience than it was in the past. And any doctor, who has sufficient understanding of human nature to succeed as a general practitioner, knows that while one or two intelligent single women now come weekly for diagnostic confirmation of unpleasant fears, he is seldom called upon to confine them. Thus, while we are being consulted by more single women, we are actually confining less. It is no use anyone suggesting that they wander off to another reputable practitioner. If it was customary thus to wander, every doctor would be getting a proportion of someone-else’s cases; but he does not. Experience and observation convince one that these women receive their diagnosis and depart from the doctor to the pill-vendor or the abortionist, and, with or without a couple of weeks’ ‘ holiday ’ from office or business, carry on their avocations as usual. As already stated, the marvel is that many of them get off so lightly.
2. Just as doctors are attending fewer women, married and single, for their confinements, so are they attending more and more women for the results of abortions. When it is remembered that the doctor is called in only if there are complica-
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tions, we can only guess at the actual number which he does not see.
3. We have the statistics of the falling birth rate and the rising septic abortion rate.
4. The patients themselves, knowing that they can trust the doctor’s confidence, are frequently very candid. They will tell of past abortions, by whom done and how done. Frequently they consult one with a request to terminate the pregnancy, and when the request is refused they accept it with a casualness which shows how little they care. One such patient remarked, “ All right, but I would have preferred you to do it, because the person I usually go to always wants cash down.” Another stated that she preferred a doctor because he would be cheaper!
5. The abortionist abounds —everywhere. Like the bookmaker, he or she flourishes best in the shadows and so cannot be enumerated. But there is definite evidence that in some parts of New Zealand known abortionists exist at the rate of one for every thousand of the total population.
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11.
How does the doctor deal with the case of the pregnant woman who comes asking for an operation which he is forced to refuse?
It is necessary here to deal in turn with both the single girl and the married woman.
THE SINGLE WOMAN
The old phrase “ the unmarried mother ” is rapidly passing out of current speech. With the exception of the engaged girl, for whom it is easy to plan a quick and quiet wedding, modern medical experience shows that any single woman of brains and personality will, in these days, get her pregnancy terminated somehow. It is only the weak-minded, or the extremely young and simple, who carry on and finally seek shelter in refuge homes and public institutions.
There are three main classes of single girls who seek diagnosis and help in one’s surgery.
Firstly: The subthyroid, submental type whom Society will not condemn and whose friends and kin, belonging to the same lower stratum, will never arch their eyebrows. These girls are consigned to a receiving home, and the only problem left working in the thoughtful doctor’s mind is, “ Will the babe be also a submental type
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to burden the State in later years, or to disappoint the loving couple who adopt it?”
Secondly: There is the engaged girl, and the doctor is always relieved when he sees an engagement ring on the third finger. This is a much easier task than when the man is already married, or when lack of mutual love and respect make marriage a prospect of impossible bondage. Compared with the tragedies of the third class one feels that the necessity for hasty marriage is a minor mishap, and proceeds to solace the patient accordingly. The ' treatment' consists of advice against the evils of abortion by any method whatever, pointing out the risks of subsequent sterility, the aftermath to the couple of knowing that they covered one mistake by a more heinous sin, and the joy they will have in the child of their love. This ' treatment' is often requisite to stop many respectable couples going off to the abortionists merely to save their relatives shocks and blushes in the near future. But not always. It is not uncommon to find an engaged young woman who has planned a hasty marriage being taken by the mother (or mother-in-law) to an abortionist 'to save the family honour.' Truly we have a quaint code of honour in this year of grace!
It is easy for the doctor to say, " Don't worry about a little deficiency of one or two months short
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of the nine; it is so common these days that no one takes any notice of it.” Conscience may sometimes say, “ Be careful—you are propagating a loose and loosening doctrine ”; but when it is known that the abortionists are waiting down the road to serve this distraught girl for cash, then the moral duty of the doctor is to keep her from their clutches by any means whatever.
Thirdly: The girls for whom marriage is impossible or inadvisable, provide the biggest problem in medical practice. Often the woman represents the unhappy third in the ‘ eternal triangle ’ drama. Marriage for her is impossible without dragging another woman through the Divorce Court and wrecking a home. Even if this were done she could only secure marriage under a measure of public censure, and her child would probably have to be legitimized subsequently. These girls are often of a highly intelligent type. They seek medical help under the fallacious impression that something unique in their tragedies will move the doctor’s heart to merciful action. Unfortunately, these cases are only too common, and the issues at stake permit no slackening of the moral and ethical code of the profession.
The intelligent single woman of spirit invariably retorts to the doctor’s reply, “ I cannot interfere,”
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with the remark, “ Very well, I’ll find someone else who will.” The doctor may try to get in a word of warning regarding risks—peritonitis, and the possible exposure of an inquest, etc. —but the woman at bay says, “ Well, I have only myself to live for; no one is dependent on me, and I’d rather die than be disgraced.”
One wonders by what logic our modern social code is apt to say that liaisons are no disgrace, but that conception thereby is a disgrace of such magnitude that a girl coolly considers infanticide even if it involves suicide also!
So the doctor is reluctantly forced to reject the girl’s plea for mercy and to turn her away from the surgery with trite platitudes which, experience teaches, she is not in the least likely to obey. In almost every case these girls will go to the ‘ Underworld.’ Someone will procure an abortion for them, and when, very occasionally, the law-breaker comes up for trial, the man on the street, along with even advanced thinkers, will regard him as a “ public benefactor who helps a woman in distress and saves some poor little devil being stigmatized as illegitimate.”
Death certificates show that the majority of women who succumb to abortion are married. Medical experience does not suggest that because few single women die from abortions we can
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conclude that all is well with the morals of the unmarried. Surgery consultations for diagnosis of unpleasant facts veto this happy inference. It would seem that the single girls get cash enough to secure the services of a skilled abortionist, whereas the married are often so poor that they have to content themselves with the cheaper work of the inferior intervener.
Though it is only secondary to our main purpost it is not unprofitable for a moment to pause an reflect on some of the causes of the modern ‘ mor£ laxity ’ :
1. The emancipation of women had, despite its merits, some unfortunate side effects. The young women, in their new-found independence, had an intolerance for the cautious counsels of their elders. They demanded the right to fulfil their own mental destiny, and this often degenerated into fulfilling their own physical inclinations. By adopting late marriage they faced added temptations. The engagement ring frequently replaced the marriage ring. About ten years ago our ‘ highly respectable ’ Dominion was horrified to find that about a quarter of all first-borns were arriving before the nine months of married life, which our social code decides is requisite to respectability. Our figures temporarily shocked our Australian cousins who had previously
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regarded New Zealand as ‘ the good little country ’ ; but Australian statistics soon revealed that their own situation was no better.
2. The Battle of Parental Control: This has been fought and lost. To-day modern mothers think nothing of permitting well-born girls of sixteen or seventeen to run round with their ‘ boy friends ’ at all hours of the day and night. They say as an excuse “ all girls do it these days.”
If these mothers knew what the medical profession knows of ‘ what everyone does,’ they would be stricter in the supervision of their attractive daughters. When a sweet lady-like girl of eighteen comes into the surgery and the doctor advises a hasty marriage with the man she has been going with for perhaps the last two years she is usually terribly distressed. Almost invariably she says, “What will Mother say?” The doctor is frequently more interested in the twinge of conscience in the girl, than in what the mother will say. He is inclined to damn the mother with the reflection that she deserves all that is coming to her. Generally nothing comes to the mother. The girl goes away to ‘ think it over.’ For a fortnight she disappears from her social circle. Then she comes back a little white and shaky. She knows that the doctor realizes
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where she has been but she knows, too, that she can rely on his silence.
3. Mothers of the Victorian school guided their daughters in paths of rectitude by the crude warning, “ If you run risks you’ll have the pains of hell and be a social leper all your life.” It was bad psychology; it produced a virtue born of fear; but it acted as a deterrent. Mothers of to-day start off by being frightened to tell youngsters the truth from the moment the little four-year-olds ask them, “ Where did you get me from?” They give subterfuges for facts and withhold the truth till, one day, they suddenly realize that the girls are leaving home to battle with a fast and reckless world. Then they are tempted to give them some advice, but courage fails at the last moment and they argue, “ What’s the use of saying anything, girls know too much these days.”
If they know too much, whose fault is it? Parents need not blame Marie Stopes entirely for their children’s pace in life. Modern youth sails uncharted seas and parents provide no compasses.
4. Modern Youth is a product of the War years with their twisted and warped emotions and logic. It is not an auspicious hereditary background in many instances. Back there lay the fillip, and to-day, with its modern amenities, provides no
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restraint. The widespread use of the motor-car, the facilities of flats, and the seductions of cheap literature and certain films do not tend to stem immoral tendencies.
THE MARRIED WOMAN
The married women who request a termination of pregnancy likewise fall into definite classes:
1. There is a small proportion whose main characteristic is mental vacuity. They have potentialities neither for maternity nor anything else. They often have lots of male friends who find them ‘ amusing.’
2. There is a small group possessing capability, but obviously preferring pet poodles to children. There is no use wasting clinical time over them. They are parasites, who, even if we could conscript them into bearing and delivering a child, would never make real mothers. The only problem they present is how to deviate the money they lavish on dogs to the maternity allowances of the genuine mothers who do carry on the real business of life.
3. Another group, by no means a small one, gives the impression that one’s surgery is used as a diagnostic station en route to the abortionist. One confirms unpleasant suspicions, but in the weeks and months that follow, one continually encounters these patients about their usual
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avocations, self-poised and gracious, with ‘no encumbrances ’ in the present or future sense.
4. There is lastly a small proportion, but an important proportion, of genuinely harassed respectable women who, for one reason or another, should not be having the present pregnancy. These usually have a good-sized family, speaking in modern terms, and are afflicted with either poverty, over-work or ill-health. They may show signs of either heart or kidney disease, tuberculosis, or, most commonly, a type of anaemia and malnutrition which results from continued depletion of their blood, calcium and vitamin stocks, by a rapid succession of pregnancies. Apart from the rapid production of the infants, they have made further inroads into their bodily reserves by trying to breast-feed all the children, partly because this was the right and natural thing to do, partly as an economy measure; but, very often, because they hoped lactation would protect them from another conception. When a woman, for the last six or eight years, has never had a rest of more than a month from either making a child ,or suckling a child, any intelligent physiologist expects to find the human machine more ready for the scrap heap than for the task of making another satisfactory infant. “ Satisfactory ” should be stressed, for we are too
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inclined to count our population in terms of total numbers instead of assessing them in terms of virility and vitality.
What is the use of morality demanding that this worn-out woman should produce another weedy child? What good will it do the State if the latter says, “ No, you must keep on breeding because the State needs children,” if the children themselves are to be reared in Health Camps, classed C 3 when the next war comes, and maintained for ever by the State with some form of invalid pension?
When married women plead for an abortion to be performed, what are the grounds on which they base their plea?
The commonest plea is poverty. There is such a thing as real poverty, but it is not common in provincial practice in New Zealand. Only occasionally does the patient's dress, home conditions, and state of nourishment support her argument.
There are cases however where we know that the mother has four or five children all on the breadline and far off the vitamin line. We feel it is a tragic case, but we have to say, “ Madam, the law of this land does not permit us to terminate pregnancy for financial reasons.” We try to pare the present pregnancy of some of its terrors for
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her and we promise instruction in birth control later, but even as we speak we are wondering what stamina the coming child will receive from her calcium and vitamin-depleted body. Dispirited and tearful she goes away; and conscience says to us, “ Legally correct, ethically and scientifically wrong.” In a millennium poverty will be no more. Children will not be born closer than two years apart. Meanwhile, despite the most beneficent standard of wages imaginable, there will always be some husbands who will not work, who will accept sustenance or pensions rather than blister their hands and bend their backs, and in matrimonial dependence on such men any birthcontrol advice one can give the wife is merely a counsel of perfection.
Social workers, when considering the question of poverty, often make the error of thinking in terms of money only. A greater hardship is often poverty of time, poverty of leisure, poverty of conveniences, facilities and amenities.
Take, for example, the city dweller who commands a living wage, and no more. One assumes that he ‘ can get along all right,’ but what is his home life like? Suppose that he has several little children and that it is winter. The children have to be herded together in the small house. They become bored, irritable, and destruc-
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live. The harassed mother is confronted daily with piles of washing, some of which has to remain wet for a week at a time. There is no peace in the house and no refuge outside it. The children get shouted at. They become sullen and resentful. Domestic harmony has gone before the children are half grown up. At the earliest opportunity they leave home. This is the poverty of amenities.
In the country there is often poverty of time. New Zealand’s main industry is dairying, and the wives of share-milkers or small owners have to assist in the sheds night and morning. Shed hours superimposed upon the routine domestic work require the woman to work steadily from 5 a.m. to 8 p.m., which, allowing for meals, equals fourteen hours a day. Computing that the wife reduces her Sunday duties to eight hours a day, she still works ninety-two hours a week, and when any of the children get ill and she does night nursing, the period is extended. Moreover, this industry presents a holiday-less toil. There is not one day between August, when the cows come in, and May, when they are dried off, that the milker or his wife can have a day that starts with a ‘ lie in ’ until 8 a.m. and then a whole day’s relaxation.
The city dweller is apt to think that all is well with the children in dairying districts now that
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milking machines have banished child labour from the sheds. But the children still suffer from the lack of maternal care inevitable when the mother is away at the sheds in those important hours of child life, the hours between wakening and school and between return from school and bed.
Visualize an ordinary day—say a wet day, and you will not be far wrong, for industry places the cows where the rainfall is heaviest. Father and mother rise with the dawn at 5 a.m., get a ‘ slap-up ’ cup of tea in the kitchen and, leaving the tea-things sprawling all over the table, depart for the sheds. The children wake when they will and dress how they will.
At 7.45 a.m. mother rushes up from the sheds and gives the kiddies a ‘ slap-up ’ breakfast while she cuts them their school lunches. Father will get his fried eggs and potatoes at about 8.30 a.m. before he takes the milk to the factory. The lunches are consistently made of bread and butter or bread and jam. Mother has neither the time nor the intelligence to think of assorted vitamin sandwiches. Any ideas she ever possessed of home science vanished long ago under the hard exigencies of life.
The kiddies trail off one or two miles to school, and trail home again in the wet, arriving back at about 4.30 p.m. Now, just when the real mother
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should be handy to see that Tommy does not sit about in wet stockings, that boots are properly stuffed with paper and put in a warm, but not scorching, place to dry, and that the top-coats are properly dried for the morrow, this mother has to don boots and rubbers and depart again for the sheds. The children are left to their own devices—their own occupation, the fascination of the fire, the vegetables kept warm from the midday meal, and the resources of the sugar bins. Mother returns in the dusk, or dark, at a quarter to seven to prepare hurriedly a ‘ slap-up ’ tea, and at 7 o’clock the family settle down to consume this. At seven-thirty all the children tumble into half-made beds and sleep the sleep of the just, despite the outraged wails of home science, and the probable stuffiness of an ill-ventilated bedroom.
What of the kiddies’ physiques under this yearly routine? Can one wonder that the diet mostly consists of white bread, butter, jam and the products of the ready-made cake shop? Mother has no time to think of the advantages of wholemeal bread, of tastily baked hard bread as an aid to mastication, or of the merits of raw celery and apple in the winter and tomato and lettuce in the summer. As for teeth—well, the dental service in a dairying district must feel thankful if the children of these homes, left to their own
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devices, even think of toothbrushes! Moreover, these children seldom consume enough milk. Men and women who spend their days in the company of the cow generally prefer their tea without her assistance. Mothers with a distaste for milk themselves generally forget to insist that the children get their ration, whether as hot milk or in suitable puddings, and so the vicious cycle of excess carbohydrate food minus adequate calcium and vitamin balance persists. The educational system in any dairying district needs to be specialized according to the requirements of the children. Posture, the prevention of mouth breathing, chest expansion, shoulder bracing and the correction of dental and dietetic defects are of greater importance than the age at which Tommy and Mary pass their proficiency examination.
Here let us stress that it is not these hardworking dairy farmers’ wives who most frequently seek abortion, for these belong to the homely, less ambitious group of women. The requests come most frequently from the wives of the ‘ white collar ’ class, thus supporting our contention that it is more a demand for luxury and a keeping abreast of the times than either poverty or hard work which is at the root of this trouble in New Zealand.
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Doctors who know all the luxuries and amenities of the particular homes from which their patients come often quietly smile at the patient’s plea of poverty, and think it would do these women good to be compelled to go back seventy years and bring their families up in the plain, homely discipline of the pioneers.
Finally, the plea of poverty may be merely fictitious. The patient says glibly “ Can’t afford,” and at the doctor’s murmur of polite scepticism she repeats it. He says, “ Madam, your silk hose, your crocodile shoes and your tailored costume do not suggest that you are poverty-stricken.” The patient is probably hurt at his even suggesting that she is poverty-stricken. However, when the air is cleared a little and the doctor and patient settle down to discuss the real business the reasons for the request work out as follows:
The woman has already two children, aged eight and six years. She has done her years of cradle-rocking and staying at home and was just looking forward to going out with her mate to ‘ keep herself up.’ Her maternal ‘ cluck ’ is satisfied with the two children she already has and she rebels, long and strenuously, at what she calls ‘this unjust imposition upon her.’ It is only right to add that modern woman is such a conflict of forces that if she is persuaded to leave
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this pregnancy alone for a few'weeks the primitive mother-instinct will triumph over her ' freedom ' demands. A wise doctor plays for time in these cases, and tries to decoy the patient from the pill-seller and the abortionist until the mother instinct grows and leads her back to sanity.
By quickening-time these women come back bright and smiling, hoping that we have forgotten the painful details of their earlier rebellion, and settle down to prepare an elaborate layette with the same enthusiasm with which they prepared the nest for their first child. When it is all over they teach the existing family to worship this once unwanted, now idolized, afterthought-babe.
When women ask for an abortion the plea next most common to poverty is that the already existing family is too young. " The children arc coming too fast."
When this is the excuse it provides a genuine problem to the patient and to the thoughtful doctor. If we believe that the child's heritage of vitality and fitness depends upon the mother's reserves at the time of conception and gestation, what are we to say to the following cases?
CASE V—A mother with a six-months-old infant at her breast, and another twenty-months-old toddler clinging to her skirts, states that she is two months pregnant again. She is still breast-feeding No. 2. Instant weaning is ordered in the interests of No. 3.
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It seems like shutting the stable door after the horse has bolted, but it is all that we can do under existing legislation. No. 3is born when No. lis twenty-seven months old. Two months later the mother is ‘ out in the sheds ’ helping to share-milk 100 cows. She has no domestic help. Maids are at a premium in New Zealand, and if they were available they would not go near a share-milker’s house for obvious reasons. Mother teaches the infants to sleep while she is doing her evening milking. The kitchen fire is extinguished as a precaution, and each babe is locked in a separate room as a safeguard against stray scissors, knives, etc. Returning at 7 p.m. she rekindles the fire, prepares tea for her husband and ‘ the man,’ and feeds the infants, getting her own tea in the intervals. As soon as she is finished, she tumbles into bed to get much-needed sleep in order to repeat the same ritual next day. The treadmill makes no provision for sickness on her part, nor provides any let-up should all three children get whooping cough, and wake her every twenty minutes throughout the night.
The human machine goes on toiling, doing men’s work and women’s work simultaneously. Legislation gives us a forty-hour week for sturdy males, but our legislators will have to think long and hard before they can remedy the ninety-hour week worked by many mothers on dairy farms.
CASE Vl—The wife of a struggling member of a minor profession. She had twins first, and when they were fourteen months old another infant was born. The third was difficult to rear and was only twelve pounds weight at six months old. To enable the mother to
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obtain that mental rest essential to the manufacture of breast-milk for the weakly infant everything possible was done to secure what peace could be found for her in a five-roomed house inhabited by three infants all under twenty months of age! Suddenly a biological bomb hit the home. There were indications of a fourth child. What was to be done? It was useless reiterating birth-control teaching when No. 4 was on the way. Doubtless, the couple had received such a fright that ever after they would practice the full technique to the point of creating a repression neurosis in the male and an obsession phobia in the female. That, however, was a matter for the future to decide. The practical thing from the pediatrician's point of view was that if No. 4 was to have any chance of being born robust, weakly No. 3 must be immediately cut off from its essential heritage of breast-milk.
This was a challenge to the medical profession from distressed humanity which could not be ignored. The statutory law makes no provision for this type of case. It does not define what constitutes terminating a pregnancy lawfully and unlawfully, merely saying " he who terminates unlawfully." Being in a legal dilemma, the doctor concerned sent this patient and delicate No. 3 to a colleague of highest standing in New Zealand, and when the latter gave his written opinion that the operation should be done the practitioner did it with a clear conscience, albeit it was technically ' outside the law.'
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CASE Vll —Fatient, aged twenty-seven, came in and asked, " Can" you do something for me?" She fancied she was 'in trouble ' again. She had seven children at home and had accomplished this commendable national service by marrying at eighteen and having No. 1 before she was nineteen. Between Nos. 1 and 2 there was a twenty-three months' gap. She does not know, even now, how she managed this particular spacing. Between Nos. 2 and 7 there was anything from an eleven months' to a thirteen months' gap. All their birthdays fell between Ist November and 31st December. This woman had never dreamed of having help. Instead site lielped with the sharemilking. Every year since marriage she had regularly gone to the sheds and done her share of milking forty cows. Granted that there were machines, the morning and evening work of such a herd represented three hours of hard work for the husband and two hours for the wife. Questioned as to what she did with the children while she was away at the sheds, she cheerfully replied, " Oh, the older ones mind the younger." One wondered what sort of supervision Nos. 3 and 4 got when their supervisors were aged five and three respectively. Asked, also, as to how soon after the birth of a babe she went back to the milking sheds, she said, not without a measure of pride in her virtues as a working wife, " I always go back on the fourteenth day; Mum used to go back on the tenth day, didn't you, Mum?" And the grandma referred to expanded with pride at what she had accomplished in the earlier days of New Zealand history. As this patient looked healthy and happy, despite her present worry, and as she and her husband had not seriously tried birth control, it was decided to see how capable they were of following definite advice.
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This particular young woman belonged to what might be called the ‘ peasant ’ mentality. She was reasonably clean, very thrifty, hard-working, and fond of her children. Over and above this she had no culture, no ambitions, no conflictions. She had the placid temperament of the meek-eyed cows she milked. But she was the mother of men.
CASE VIII—A miner's wife in the middle forties. She was heavy, dull, anaemic and crippled with varicose veins. Her life had been a tragedy of poverty and reproduction. She had twelve children. She welcomed with relief the end of the child-bearing period until she made the tragic discovery that she had misread the symptoms. Panic-stricken, she sought medical aid and it was refused. The law would not allow. She bore twins and despite a pneumonia immediately after the birth, she survived. She took the children back to their heritage of fog and soot and semi-starvation near the mine. One died and the other sickened. She tried to bring it back to town for medical aid. It died in her arms as she stepped off the train. For over a mile of streets she bore the corpse wrapped in a shawl, until she reached the hospital and asked for the morgue.
In these days the lack of domestic help is a common plea which women submit when they request that a fourth or fifth pregnancy should be terminated. The problem requires little amplifying. It is known to all New-Zealanders. But visualize what life is like for, say, the wife of a skilled labourer who has five children, the eldest
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of whom is nine, and who also has to take charge of an aged or invalided father-in-law or mother-in-law.
The latter may, or may not, have a pension to supplement the family income; but it is not the money question which this patient bemoans when she comes to her doctor in tears and requests that her sixth pregnancy be terminated. Her trouble is that no help will be available to permit her the requisite rest during the latter weeks of pregnancy, and that she never gets a holiday except the ‘ holiday ’ that begins with labour pains and ends when she returns with a fourteen-day-old babe in her arms to resume full charge of the house and the household.
It is a nightmare of anxiety in these days for expectant mothers to find a capable housekeeper to t;\ke charge of the home and the existing toddlers while they depart to hospital to give birth to another babe. There are excellent housekeeping schemes drafted, but the demand far exceeds the supply. It might be possible for our Health Camp scheme to be enlarged, so that every province has its camps which could also serve as well-supervised receiving homes for children whose mothers are unable to secure, or to afford, suitable assistance during their period of confinement and rest.
Despite the growing socialistic tendencies of the
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age, the majority of parents—at least in our experience—would be pleased to pay a small maintenance fee for the children, offsetting this against the wages and housekeeping accounts of an unknown (and usually unobtainable) domestic.
We understand that in the main centres lack of housing accommodation is a common plea for termination of a second or third pregnancy. The couple live in a flat and say that they can manage only one child, or at most, two. New Zealand is a recently settled country and we have ample room for our towns and cities to expand. We have timber in our valleys and stone in our quarries. It is, therefore, scant testimony to our past administration if a civil servant, on an annual salary of £3OO, is able to state that if he invested in the ‘ luxury ’ of two children he would have to pay at least 35/- per week rental for a suburban home for them, and in addition, perhaps, a 2/per day travelling and luncheon allowance for himself.
We realize that the present Government is moving in the matter of better housing accommodation Moreover, in the State’s interest it is hoped that in the allotment of these homes preference will always be given to the deserving parents of families.
Another common plea is the misery of the
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gestation period. The patient who advances this reason usually does so timidly, without much confidence that anyone will believe it. Actually, if her doctor is experienced, he will give far more credence to her plea than he will to that of the patient who pleads poverty. Pregnancy is not a time of physiological placidity. Any doctor familiar with the mentally-jaundiced, perpetually sea-sick perspective of life which is the accompaniment of early pregnancy in most civilized women, can only salute the maternal instinct which, burning strong, triumphs over the present and prospective conflictions and enables them to “ endure . . . for the hope that is set before them.” When one is privileged to watch a patient who is experiencing a nervous and gastric disbalance which would drive the average male to suicide or homicide in a week, who nevertheless attends to housework and the daily and nightly requirements of two other children, and who, over a vista of bismuth powders and vomiting bowls cheerfully looks forward to the coming of the third child, one feels that one is witnessing a drama of pure heroism.
Another plea frequently given is the dread of the pains of childbirth, and it is certainly a large factor in the prevention of pregnancy.
It is no use a cynical critic saying that modern
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women have lost the grit and nerve possessed by their grandmothers. It has already been shown that grandmothers had no alternative but to conceive rapidly and go through labours without any aids to pain-relief. Their granddaughters have an alternative, and we see results of the option in the falling birth rate.
It is a well-known biological fact that the moment Nature provides any conglomeration of protoplasm with a nervous system it makes that protoplasm susceptible to pain. Give it a highlyorganized nervous system and it has a high degree of susceptibility to pain and shock. Modern man feels pain more than his cave-dwelling ancestors, and modern woman suffers more in labour than Kipling’s “ wild, wild woman who combed her hair with a mutton bone.” Every decade which educates and stimulates woman to further heights of mental ability decreases her physical stability and renders more difficult for her the minor trials of gestation and the major throes of labour. Her higher education in art, home science, music, drama, social attributes—all the things that make her useful and attractive to modern man—make it harder for her to be the mother of his children. Reference has already been made to the mother of seven children under the age of ten who was well and happy; but this was only because she had a peasant-like mentality.
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Unfortunately, civilization does not permit modern mothers merely to feed themselves and breed. They are born and bred, live and die in an atmosphere of conflicts. Labour throes are among the more compelling of these conflicts.
But, though civilization has made woman more susceptible to pain and less able to bear it, civilization has also provided a compensation. Most of the pain of childbirth can now be relieved by modern drugs. Wisely used they are safe, harmless and effective. The circle of doctors who employ them as a routine is steadily widening. The technique involves more time and attention on the part of the doctor, and his presence off and on through labour and at the delivery is imperative. The technique would, if adopted as an integral part of a national maternity scheme, be a little more costly than present methods, but can anything be more costly to the State than our falling birth rate?
It is said sometimes—by the ignorant—that the use of sedatives in the early stages, is harmful to mother and child. This statement we emphatically refute. We have other reasons for our faith than mere statistics, but for the present let them serve our purpose. Let us quote the results of three doctors in the northern part of the Dominion, whose conception of obstetrical duty is to relieve
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pain to the utmost of their ability. Their figures over a period of eight years are given:
Doctor A—
Number of Cases 1,923
Genuine Maternal Mortality 6 = 3.12 per 1,000
Still Births 54 =2B per 1,000 or 2.809
Doctor B
Number of Cases 2,104
Genuine Maternal Mortality 3 = 1.42 per 1,000
Still Births GO =2B per 1,000 or 2.859
Doctor C
Number of Cases 690
General Maternal Mortality 0
Still Births 15 = 21 per 1,000 or 2.17%
Their average figures therefore are—
Genuine Maternal Mortality 1.90 per 1,000 births
Still Births 27 per 1,000 or 2.73%
During the same period the Dominion figures were—
Genuine Maternal Mortality 3.65 per 1,000 births
Still Births 30.9 per 1,000 or 3.09%
So that when compared with the general average these doctors who believe in combating pain can quote figures better for the baby and nearly twice as good for the mother.
The knowledge that there are analgesics for childbirth should be more widely known if only
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to offset some of the psychological damage done to potential mothers by the tales of their grandmothers. These latter, having little else to talk about, indulged in the pernicious habit of repeating before a collection of young women what they did and suffered in labour; what the Gamps did or did not do; what the doctor should have done and did not; and how grandpapas, clapping hands over ears, fled to the lowest cellar or to the furthest stable, to get away from the yells and shrieks of the women they had forced into the agony of labour. Modesty prevented writers putting these experiences into literature; instead, they left the shrieks to feminine imagination, and merely painted a humorous picture of how grandfathers behaved when doctors came downstairs and said, “ There were complications.” But grandmothers’ harrowing experiences of labour are tabulated indelibly on the minds of women of the third generation, and, having the choice of no marriage but a career, marriage and no children, or marriage and a few children, they firmly decide they will be ‘ wise ’ in their day and generation.
How different would be the attitude of women to maternity if we could get a million women going about saying “Oh well, the trials of carrying are, after all, only temporary, and once
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labour comes on you are over the worst part, for modern methods make it comfortable and safe.” They could continue their bracing philosophy by saying “ Only three to four mothers per thousand die, nowadays, you know; no need to be afraid of the risk; and as for the so-called ‘ pains ’ — well, modern drugs given by a doctor who specializes in such work take three-quarters of the pain away. One only feels a kind of far-off, mild pain that does not distress, and at the last one goes right to sleep with ether or chloroform, wakes up, seemingly only a minute after, and heigh-ho! there .is a rosy baby in the cot.”
It is no uncommon experience in the life of a considerate obstetrician to watch a young mother coming back to consciousness, to perceive her perplexity as she listens to the crying of her baby and to hear her whisper in amazement, “ Is it all over? I thought it was going to be terrible!”
It is safe to predict that if we initiated a gospel of feminine good-cheer like this, and spread it by a process of geometrical progression throughout the Empire, it would do much to improve the birth rate. As it is, women are terrified by the harrowing experiences of others, and are fed by authorities on a yearly diet of statistics which set out the ‘ risks ’ of maternity. There is no need to camouflage figures; it is all a matter of
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what deductions we draw from them. If we tell women that the risk is only 3.6 per thousand if they let pregnancy continue naturally, point out to them that they run greater risks in many modern forms of pleasure, and that when it comes to actual labour they will not be permitted to know much about it, we will have gone most of the way towards getting them into a reasonable and sane frame of mind.
Let us summarize then our findings as far as we have gone. The birth rate is falling. ‘ Immorality ’ amongst the unmarried is prevalent, owing to facilities for avoiding the consequences. The abortion rate amongst the married is rising, and so is the death rate therefrom. The reasons which drive women to abortionists are widely divergent. We submit that (with the exception of cases such as No. VI. where scientific birth control should have prevented the disaster, and case No. VIII. where preventive sterilization should have been advised at an earlier date) the remedy for the demand for abortion lies in drastic social readjustments, and a deliberate campaign to readjust mental perspective. The remedy does not lie in consenting to terminate pregnancies on request.
We have yet to discuss a group of genuine medical reasons why a pregnancy should be
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terminated; but we have outlined above the usual reasons which daily tempt women to visit abortionists, and which very occasionally bring the illegal operator to trial. We gather from the verdicts of present-day juries that they do not see eye to eye with the rank and file of the medical profession. Doctors refuse to terminate the coming life save on the strictest reasons of maternal ill-health, and juries refuse to convict the abortionist who does do it, because they seem to believe that the perfecting of the life that has commenced will be a passing inconvenience to the woman who carries it.
We are quite prepared for critics to retort that not all doctors are so fastidiously conscientious. We admit the possibility that in these complicated days of civilization a few renegade members of our profession may have forgotten the traditions of the Hippocratic oath, and under a looselyapplied statutory law may find it easy to be persuaded by a patient and her relatives that a certain pregnancy must be terminated. The sincerity of the motives of such doctors may be assessed by the fees they accept. But a medical diploma in no way exonerates a doctor from the charge of being a common criminal abortionist if it is proved that he performed this operation for reasons other than serious maternal ill-health.
CHAPTER FIVE
THE LEGAL WITNESS
Theke are two legal aspects:
(1) Legal abortion
(2) Legal sterilization
British law and New Zealand law which was copied from the former, only permit therapeutic abortion (i.e., terminating pregnancy because of maternal ill-health) if the ill-health is severe enough to indicate that the mother will die if the pregnancy continues. This is the Medical and Statutory law which officially stands in New Zealand to-day.
The relevant sections of the Crimes Act, 1908, read as follows:
Section 220, subsection (2) —
“ No one is guilty of any crime who, by means employed in good faith for the preservation of the
life of the mother of the child, causes the death of such child before or during its birth.”
Section 174
" 1. A child becomes a human being within the meaning of this Act when it has completely proceeded in a living state from the body of its mother, whether
it has breathed or not, whether it has independent
circulation or not, and whether the navel string is severed or not.
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“2. The killing of such child is homicide if it dies in consequence of injuries received before, during, or after birth.”
Section 220, subsection (1)
“ Every one is liable to imprisonment with hard labour for life who causes the death of any child which has not become a human being in such a manner that he would have been guilty of murder if such child had been bom.”
Such ruling makes no provision for the likely fact that many of the women soon to be described will be rendered permanent invalids, or that their prospect of reasonable long life will be jeopardized if they essay to make another life. But in the modern rush of our present civilization, who is to do the domestic work—who is to feed, clothe, nurse and train the existing children—if a conservative law compels the mother to fulfil her destiny, even to the extent of becoming a chronic invalid?
More and more, in the last ten years, medical thought has been deciding that this law is neither wise nor just. Public opinion, which knows even better than our legislators what it is to have four or five children without domestic help, and without bank accounts, brands it as obsolete. Note that public opinion is not announced to us: it is revealed by the repeated surprising verdicts of modern juries. The problem is how to alter the law to
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make it adequate, but without making it pander to the present vogue for small families and to a selfish demand for luxury.
The British Medical Association of Great Britain has been exercising itself with this problem for some years, and in 1934 a Committee was set up within the Association to consider “ The Case for the Amendment of the Law Relating to Abortion.” This medical body is not the maker of English Law but it knew that English legislators would welcome its advice. The report of this Committee has been published, and has been recently adopted, not without vigorous opposition from some forty-seven per cent of Council members, as the official opinion of the British Medical Association of Great Britain.
This report states in its opening part that such inquiry was necessary because, firstly, as the law now stands, “ medical practitioners were often unwilling to perform necessary therapeutic abortion owing to their sense of legal risks incurred,” and secondly, “ because the medical profession should be prepared to guide public opinion which is becoming more and more interested in this problem.”
The British report, which will probably be the basis of the amendment of the law throughout the
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Empire, gives a list of ' indications ' which may be considered adequate grounds for " the consideration of the termination of pregnancy." Medical ethical practice usually requires two doctors to approve of such an operation.
The list enumerates, amongst other things
1. Heart Disease, well-established.
2. Tuberculosis.
3. Chronic Nephritis —i.e., kidney disease
o. Ksiuunu. i» ey;/( / uto i.e., iMuiiev uiaeaae. 4. Intractible Pyelitis —another form of kidney disease.
5. Recurring Severe Pregnancy Toxaemias.
6. Mental Conditions. (But there is the proviso that
expert advice is requisite to decide how far these conditions are genuine and how far due only to temporary stress of emotion.)
7. Repeated Dangerous Labours. (A wise rider is added that Caesarean section could avert the risk in this type of case).
8. Rapidly repeated Pregnancies which cause dep, Health. The report reads, "If after consultation and examination it is certain that the physical and mental health will be affected, and there is reasonable certainty of chronic invalidism resulting, then therapeutic abortion should seriously be considered."
9. Pregnane!/ following Rape below Age of Consent.
10. Hereditary Conditions, such as:
(a) If two certified mentally defective children have already been born.
(b) Hereditary deaf-mutism.
(c) Hereditary blindness.
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The above is a summary of the problem that exercises modern medical minds. Note that as yet no reference has been made to the attitude which the profession is to take towards criminal abortion. We are at present engaged in discussing the case of the married woman who for health or hereditary reasons should, or should not, be compelled to proceed with her pregnancy.
On one hand is the conservative section of the medical profession which says that the above comprehensive list of ‘ indications ’ is the thin end of a big and dangerous wedge. Who can say, they argue, just when a third or fifth pregnancy carries with it risks sufficient to certify that invalidism will be the inevitable consequence?
Opposed to them will be found the great majority of general practitioners, who by dint of experience know what are the problems of complicated modern maternity.
The difficulties confronting general practitioners in New Zealand have already been referred to and examples given, the commonest of which is the depleted, anaemic, prolific and economicallypoor woman who would come under the category of “ meriting consideration for therapeutic abortion ” if the British Medical Association’s recommendations became law. The recommendations are not law yet in either Britain or New Zealand,
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and until they are, self-respecting, law-abiding doctors must harden their hearts and insist that the recently conceived child must be carried to the end.
Such cases are sociological as well as medical problems, and even if the law is amended to make termination of the pregnancy possible after two doctors have decided that the maternal body is physiologically unfit for the task of maternity, our profession would probably refuse to be the sole arbiters. Even the most liberal-minded doctors would agree that the responsibilities are great, the possibilities of abuse endless, and would desire assistance from some recognized judicial authority. Though these cases may not be very numerous in New Zealand, yet they form a definite proportion of the problems met with in daily practice; and it is from this class of oppressed mothers that there come the greatest number of abortion deaths. The obvious i - eason for the fatal ending appears to be that the women concerned, being too poor to pay the fees of a skilled abortionist, get a well-meaning, misguided neighbour to help them, or else perform the mutilation themselves.
It is true that much might be done for these prolific women by intelligent instruction in birthcontrol methods by the doctor who officiated at
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these rapidly recurring confinements. The doctor in charge of the delivery is the one, par excellence, to give this advice. But even then, for various reasons, a percentage of unphysiological pregnancies will still occur. ‘ Accidents occur in the best regulated households ’ and no matter how perfect the team work of maternity clinics, social services, and minimum wage standards may be, the human factor will sooner or later cause a breakdown. Meanwhile, we are far from having a perfect system; and what can medical intelligence do for these women? Even when we do attain to perfection of organization, we must be prepared to deal intelligently with the accidents of that system. If a woman is going to have repeated therapeutic abortions would it not be better for her to submit to the operation of sterilization?
What is this operation of sterilization? It is a simple abdominal operation, completed in half an hour, and with no after effects other than sterility. If it is performed during the course of another operation, it adds only a very few minutes to the total time.
It must be emphasized that there is now a technique for sterilizing women which has no after effect upon her mentality, her weight, her married life, or her normal functions other than the normal function of conceiving. In other
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words, sterilization makes no interruption in any of the relationships of married life.
Is the operation of sterilization ever justified?
CASE IX—The patient was thirty-five, and had seven children. Since the birth of the third, she had suffered from tuberculosis. After each birth a flare-up of the trouble occurred, and she lost a little more of her health, weight and vitality. With no more pregnancies she had a fighting-chance for life. With two more she would certainly have died. She was sterilized and she recovered.
CASE X—The patient’s home was in the Islands where there was no efficient medical help. In the first pregnancy she nearly lost her life and was a partial invalid for years. Her second and third children were bom in New Zealand. Then she had to go back to the Islands where she was to be permanently resident. The consequences would be serious. She was sterilized.
CASE Xl—The patient was aged thirty-two. In eight and a half years she had had two miscarriages and six children, ranging from eight and a half years to four weeks. Birth-control advice was useless, as the other partner, though a good husband and father, was intractible on this point. This woman had for ten years helped to milk a herd of sixty cows. She went back to the sheds by the sixteenth or eighteenth day after every confinement, and she preferred to take the infant, crib and all, and park it between 6 a.m. and 8 a.m., and between 5 p.m. and 7 p.m., in the cleanest, warmest part of the shed. As a result of the dual labour of husband and wife, the couple made a yearly average of 55/- per week, apart from the extras of a free house, free milk, whatever vegetables they cared to raise, and the right to get most of their fuel off the property. The total was
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probably equivalent to £4/15/- per week. The patient was anannic, shrivelled beyond her years, and suffered from what is technically known as a ‘ bad state of pelvic efficiency.’ (No gynaecologist would expect anything else when a woman consistently returns to a fourteen-hour working-day when her babies are sixteen days old.) She had a breast-fed baby, and before her backache and leg aches were going to be relieved, she had to have an extensive operation. But a later pregnancy would have undone the effects of such an operation. So the decision was made that she had had enough children. She had 1 done her share for New Zealand.’ In fact she had treble the progeny usually possessed by people who get up and clamour for increased population.
When the babe was ten weeks old the operation was performed and she was sterilized. For a few days the child was fed on humanised milk, and thereafter the mother fed it until it was nine months old. At this date, despite the drains of lactation, the patient was fatter, rosier, and looking ten years younger than before the operation. Her ‘ drags ’ and * fears ’ removed, she had regained the appearance Nature intended her to have at the age of thirty-two.
CASE Xll—The patient was very myopic (shortsighted). She had four children who all had to wear glasses so strong that it was hard for a person talking to them to see through the lenses. At school the eldest two had to have desks right out on the floor close to the blackboard, to be able to follow the lessons at all. The eyestrain was making them backward at school, and developing an inferiority complex even at their tender ages of nine and seven. As myopia is usually a progressive weakness, what prospects
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of future happiness and occupation had these children to expect? What use to the State would they be if when they were twenty their present partial blindness had increased another twenty per cent? In this case the mother needed an abdominal operation for other reasons, and after a recognized eye specialist’s report on the children’s vision had been obtained, advantage was taken of the operation to sterilize her at the same time. She herself was only too willing to agree to the suggestion.
CASE XIII—The patient was a woman in whose family there were seven near relatives with a congenital form of blindness. They all read and wrote in Braille. She could only tell dark from light, and she married with the firm intention of having no children. After six years she found she was pregnant and was distressed to the point of insanity at the thought of transmitting her own defect. There were obstetrical reasons for performing Caesarean section, and while this was being done she was sterilized at her own urgent pleading. The child born inherited the maternal blindness.
Has a doctor a legal right to perform this operation in such cases?
Now Section 86 of the Crimes Act of 1908 which is relevant to this reads as follows:
“ 1. Every one is protected from criminal responsibility for performing with reasonable care and skill any surgical operation upon any person for his benefit: Provided that the performance of the operation was reasonable, having regard to the patient’s state at the time, and to all the circumstances of the case.
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“ 2. Every one authorized by law to use force is criminally responsible for any excess, according to the nature and quality of the act that constitutes the excess.”
The word “ sterilization ” does not appear in the New Zealand Statutes. Therefore, the operation, per se, is not prohibited. When the laws were established back in the dim past there was no such thing as sterilization. The legal world has in this matter failed to keep pace with the medical world. And daily the medical aspect presents a problem of increasing importance.
The nearest we get to a legal ruling is in the English law referring to a ‘ mutilating ’ operation, and the conservative New Zealand doctor will quote this word “ mutilating ” to his more liberalminded colleague who may recently have performed such an operation. The latter promptly replies, “ Yes, but the operation I did was not a mutilating one—it was an essential prevention against the mutilations of further pregnancies.” Or, the reply may be, “ The main operation was to restore health after mutilations received in childbirth, and the small item of sterilization was a necessary prevention against the possibility of fresh damage occurring. Therefore, it was essentially a conservative operation.”
In fact, the New Zealand law is so vague on
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this point that any doctor can interpret it as he likes.
The medical profession is not happy at this indeterminate state of affairs, and feels that the law should take cognizance of the position. We are not pleading for any special rights, but there is a large number of gynaecologists who feel that the interests of patient and State are best observed by sterilizing the damaged mothers of large families.
There needs to be a clear concept of the degree of damage. It should cover such conditions as marked pelvic disorders, permanent hyperpiesis, chronic albuminuria, active gastric ulcers, severe heart disease and tuberculosis. These patients may have already done their duty by the State, and, in any case, it is very much to the benefit of the State that they should be preserved to mother the children they already have, rather than to run the risk of succumbing in attempting to add to the number. Should we ‘ mutilate ’ the woman for the sake of the race, or mutilate the race for the sake of the woman?
Another reason why an official ruling should be given is that at present every doctor has to interpret each case according to the individual claims of the patient. Doctors judge by varying standards, and their actual decision is swayed by
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ethical, religious, and humanitarian considerations. Thus confusion arises. A doctor in one town decides conscientiously that a certain patient should be sterilized and sends the patient to a colleague in another town for confirmation; and the second doctor, just as conscientiously, disagrees.
Every right-minded doctor loathes terminating a pregnancy, even if the indications of serious maternal ill-health suggest that it is necessary. He would much rather decide before the pregnancy occurs, which women are permanently ‘ incapable ’ but highly prolific, and recommend them to a Government institution for operation.
But the Superintendents of some public hospitals do not practise within their institutions what they would vote the right and correct procedure if they were private practitioners. Their actions, as Board servants, are not in this matter governed by their private consciences and common sense. We must commend them for their fidelity to the articles of their appointment, but such conservatism leaves the general practitioner, who is dependent upon such institutions to sterilize a few necessitous cases, still in a quandary as to what to do with his patients with heart disease, chronic albuminuria, etc., who despite birthcontrol advice, repeatedly become pregnant.
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In brief, the law according to its present expression is a vague guide, and one is sorely tempted to follow one’s own conscience and common sense when confronted with such problems. If one is a law-abiding citizen, one does not like the responsibility of having only conscience as a compass in a medical fog, and would welcome the help of some recognized authority, representing legal and medical interests, to help determine one’s duty in these cases.
While authority and medical opinion refuse to face the admitted difficulties of the problems, the patients wander in a maze of worrying perplexity, the general public ask why the profession does not produce some workable solution of modern maternity problems. And meanwhile the abortionists and pill-vendors reap a rich harvest out of our procrastinations.
CHAPTER SIX
THE POLICE WITNESS
The abortionist, being untroubled by conscience, has only one risk to run, the risk of apprehension by the police.
It is a very minor peril, and both the police and the abortionist know it. The latter is surrounded by an almost impenetrable armour built of the fabrics of delays, perjury, legal technicalities, suppressed evidence and sympathetic jurors.
The police are not to blame. Bitter experience has taught them the uselessness of trials. They know who the abortionists are and what they are doing, but they know, too, that they are wasting their time and the country's money unless they can bring to the Court such incontrovertible evidence that no defence is possible. And what case is there where a clever counsel cannot find some wobbly peg on which to hang a doubt?
Two examples will illustrate:
1. An abortionist operated on a woman who died. She was brought to trial. The husband in court described all the circumstances of the various visits in elaborate detail, and his evidence
ys
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was not shaken by any cross-examination. Chemists who introduced the principal parties gave corroborative evidence. The patient herself, before her death, had described to her doctor the whole affair down to the minutest details of the illegal operation. There was much auxiliary evidence from doctors, previous clients of the accused, etc., and it all fused into a perfect case.
Counsel for the defence was hard put to it. But he managed it. The husband, after some humiliating hours in the witness-box, gave evidence of a minor statement which he had made to a doctor in hospital. This doctor later gave evidence that the witness had been mistaken in what he said. Counsel saw his opening. The witness had told a lie—he was a proved liar—all his evidence was under suspicion; without his evidence the case was a shaky one. It was enough for the jury. On that particular charge they acquitted the prisoner.
2. A letter from a young man addressed to a chemist asking him to forward a certain abortifacient to a certain address, fell into the hands of the police. The police noted the contents, but delivered the letter without arousing the suspicions of the recipient. The abortifacient was delivered at the address supplied, and the police apprehended the writer of the letter as he
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took possession of it. He was convicted, and sentenced for procuring a noxious drug. The chemist was then brought to trial. Counsel admitted that the drug had been posted from the accused’s shop in response to the letter; but, aigued counsel, what proof was there that the accused had actually posted it himself? As there were one or two assistants in the shop, the jury approved the point. The prisoner was discharged.
There is no need to multiply the instances. We aie seeing less of the flagrant cases these days because the police do not bother. They are ready and efficient, but they know the hopelessness of it. And we have to respect their wisdom.
So secure do the abortionists feel at this moment that they have no hesitation in using the resources of the State to destroy State-wanted children. In a recent trial, it was alleged, several toll-calls had been lodged between the patient’s husband and the abortionist, the latter not being averse to discussing on the telephone the procedure and the charges made. She was even said to have stated, m one of these toll-conversations, that she was too busy with other clients to leave her home and attend to new ones. And we understand that it is not uncommon for the abortionist to request a lawyer to issue a summons against the person who has not paid. The audacity of this
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makes Gilbertian comedy of British law. We have often heard of ‘ setting a thief to catch a thief.’ The modern version is ‘ Use the law to defy the law.’
From time immemorial it has been medical tradition that the doctor is neither detective nor informer. He is the trusted confidant of ill people; and, no matter how the law is amended, he must continue to be, else people will shun his medical help altogether when suffering from any complications of abortions. The abortionist seizes on this tradition, and finds that with doctors pledged to silence, and a patient who incriminates herself in a penal offence if she divulges the name of the person who operated on her, he or she has a safe field made safer in emergencies by the loopholes in the law and the attitude of many modern jurymen.
Doctors in general practice have frequent contact with this ‘underworld,’ and when the day’s tasks are finished, the memory of it haunts our resting hours. We know that the abortionists stalk ghoul-like in every city and town. They masquerade in many guises—a simple storekeeper, an honest workman, a retired gentlewoman of means, a Salvation Army enthusiast, a White Cross lecturer, a Boy Scout patron. One convicted abortionist in New Zealand was a prominent
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worker for everything affecting the welfare of the local school in the locality she was doing her best to depopulate. But for a really effective Jekyll-and-Hyde drama, this Dominion is far eclipsed by a recent Australian disclosure, where, according to certain Hospital authorities’ evidence, the respected mayor of one borough was found to be the most expensive abortionist of a district fifteen miles from the one he graced with his mayoral robes and chain!
In the rare case where the abortionist has been tried and, instead of getting the usual good advertisement out of it, gets a sentence, of what nature is that sentence? Usually imprisonment for a year or two. Is this any deterrent? From recent trials it is clear that the profits are in the region of £2,000 a year; and, if so, would not a decade of this outweigh the faint chance of a couple of years in gaol?
Section 220 of the Crimes Act, 1908, definitely states that imprisonment for life with hard labour is the possible penalty for illegal abortion. We impose the death sentence upon a murderer, even if the crime was unpremeditated. Are the ends of justice served by the trivial sentences imposed upon abortionists who deliberately, methodically and repeatedly exterminate life? One Judge of the Supreme Court who scanned these pages while
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they were still in manuscript, laid his pencil on the phrase “ trivial sentences ” and said, “ If I imposed a longer term sentence, if I gave ten or twenty years’ imprisonment, as long as I sat on this Bench I would never get another New Zealand jury to convict an abortionist.” This shows the power we have ceded to the jury. In other words, the gentlemen of the jury not only decide the verdict, but also regulate the sentence.
The law of this land requires that in all criminal charges there shall be a unanimous verdict of guilt. Obviously, in abortion cha only one or two jurymen need to be sympathetic to the accused (or to the trade he or she represents) to outwit justice. They can stonewall all verdicts of guilt, decline to give any reason for their refusal, and nullify the opinion of the majority. If more convictions were obtained, more adequate sentences imposed, more arrests would be made, and the rank and file of abortionists would be harried out of the trade. Only the most daring would persevere in the face of an active and effectual law.
Last year a Hastings woman was brought to trial, but the jury failed to agree, and a second trial took place in Wellington. The second jury also disagreed, and the case was heard a third
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time. After deliberating for four hours the third jury returned to the Court.
“ We are unable to agree,” said the foreman in response to the customary question.
“ Is there any assistance that I can give you on any point in the evidence?” asked his Honour (the Chief Justice).
The foreman: “ There is no question of the evidence at all. There are two men who have made up their minds not to convict.”
His Honour: “I do not know that you should have told me that. Seeing, however, that you have done so, it cannot be helped. What is the difficulty: these two men made up their minds not to convict, or what?”
The foreman: “Just what you say.’
His Honour: “I am very sorry, gentlemen. It is very unsatisfactory.”
His Honour said that they might remember that he had said at the opening of the trial that he had made up his mind not to forbid the publication of the proceedings, though the Crown Prosecutor had made application to that end. What he had had in mind, said the Chief Justice, was that it might be a very good thing that there should be a report so that the public should see the strength of the case.
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The Chief Justice continued, “ It is very unfortunate that because of the action of one or two men here and there the whole jury system is brought into question. If there is any gentleman who is called upon to serve on a jury, and who makes up his mind that, no matter what the evidence is, he will not convict, he should say so at first, because he should never be on a jury.”
A few days later the woman was tried for the fourth time, and even the fourth jury failed to agree. So the woman, of course, was discharged. But before she was given her freedom, his Honour the Chief Justice, who presided, spoke to her as follows:
" In the circumstances I feel justified in addressing just a few words to you. Not only was there in this case evidence given by five different women alleging that you had procured their miscarriages by the use of these instruments [here his Honour named the instruments], two of the women alleging that they were twice operated upon, but there was evidence, which is undisputed and indisputable, that during a period of from eighteen to twenty months you purchased no fewer than twenty dozen—that is 240 of these [instruments] which the medical evidence says cannot be imagined of use in the hands of a private person for other than an illegal purpose. " There was also evidence that during that same period of eighteen months you had received from no fewer than 183 persons, in varying sums, an aggregate of £2,232 10s Od, that proof coming from
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your own books. Not only that, but there was evidence that the ground, the back part of your section, was impregnated with human fcetal remains, the evidence being that no fewer than twenty-two fcetuses were found—were dug up—buried some nine or ten inches deep, every one of them developed to the extent of four months or more, and the evidence is that, up to four months a foetus could have been disposed of by being flushed away in a water closet."
Here it may be worth-while to summarize two amazing points disclosed in the extraordinary evidence given in this amazing case:
1. Twenty-two recognizable foetal remains were discovered in one Hastings back-yard. All were methodically buried in lime to aid decomposition, and the culprit must have become so indifferent to the possibility of detection, and felt so certain of the sympathy of some members of any jury, that carelessness crept into crime and a child weighing four pounds six ounces was buried at a depth of merely ten inches below the surface of the duck-yard.
2. A certain Miss 8., a witness, said that she had (after certain happenings) called on the accused to inquire, “ If the young man had paid her.” The accused was said to have replied in the negative, whereupon Miss B. herself offered to pay. It was then alleged that the accused said that it wasn’t fair for Miss B. to have to pay.
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She (the accused) had a lawyer, and would see that it was paid. The ‘ young man ’ referred to stated in evidence that when he first visited the accused he had to sign an I O U, and promised to pay £lO off within a fortnight; but as he was out of work the promises were not kept.
The young man said he next received a letter from the accused’s solicitors, and he then decided to pay &1 a month. He said he received a further letter asking whether he could pay £1 10s Od a month. He did not reply. Later, when he was in hospital, he received a summons for £l9, and he asked the accused to cancel the summons.
The young man added that he made a further promise to pay the costs in connection with the summons. These, he said, meant an additional £6 10s Od, and he gave the accused an I 0 U for that sum. He was later informed that the summons would be gone on with unless the I 0 U were settled, but the summons had not been proceeded with.
And now to return to his Honour's address to the accused:
" Well, upon that evidence the Crown submitted that a nefarious and criminal business must have been going on in your house for a period of eighteen months or more. The jury, apparently, found some difficulty and have not been able to agree upon the question, presumably, as to whether you were the
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actual person who committed these offences. I don't know, of course, whether or not that is the precise question upon which the jury differed, but all I can say is this: that I should recommend you to see that your household in future is not carried on in such a way by anyone as that you may be brought before the Court again on a charge of this kind, because, if you are, you may not be so fortunate as you are on this occasion."
After the prisoner had left the dock his Honour said, “ I venture to make those observations because there are various aspects of this case which, in my view, are worthy of the serious attention of those who guide the destiny of this young country.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
THE STATE WITNESS
The politician will say that there are laws to deal with the matter; but we have shown how ineffective these laws can be. Laws disobeyed are worse than no laws, for they are bad for public discipline.
In a Democracy, public opinion is the real law-maker; the people get what they ask for. But does New Zealand wish to pose as a clean country while encouraging an hypocrisy whereby the ‘ indiscretions ’ of the single and the ‘ inconveniences ’ of the married can be removed with impunity?
A fundamental necessity of every State is the conservation of its man-power; and in New Zealand, the man-power is being threatened. Can the State afford to do nothing—or even to keep quiet about it?
A curious feature about the present apathy is that it is quite recent. Let us go back over the past ten years for a short historical review.
In 1923, the Dominion of New Zealand had the highest maternal mortality of any equally civilized, equally sanitary country.
The position was alarming. No one knew quite
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what to do about it, and while the authorities were waiting for a lead, providentially, a scapegoat was found for them. An epidemic of puerperal sepsis accounted for four deaths in a northern maternity hospital.
Immediately the clamour started. Women’s organizations passed motions embodying both invectives and suggested remedies. Newspapers reported the matter and wrote editorials. Local interests asked for a Parliamentary inquiry. As always, the public voice won, and a Government Commission under the leadership of a Supreme Court Judge was set up to make inquiries. The first fact elicited was that the notification of the epidemic chanced to arrive at the Health Office just at noon on Saturday, two minutes after the Chief Officer had departed to inspect methods of cod-fishing down the Bay. The epidemic, perforce, had to await investigation until Monday morning. And women’s interests wanted to know why Government Officers ever had week-end holidays.
Something had to be done, and the Health Department did it. The methods may have been a little crude, embracing as they did, rules and regulations, forms and formalin, inspections and interrogations; but they can be excused now, because they did good. This period was known in local medical history as ‘ the Reign of Terror.’
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Two benefits resulted however. Firstly, the doctors were stimulated to form an organization of their own to promote obstetrical interests, and so to save their necks from the guillotine of officialdom; and secondly, the Health Department found the doctors to be willing and patient, and the doctors found the Department to be energetic and eager; and by their joint co-operation the maternal death rate began to fall.
Let us leave the statistical year 1923-24 with its blot of the highest maternal mortality rate, and come to 1934. What is the position?
The matei'nal sepsis rate for New Zealand in 1934 was then the loivest for the countries keeping parallel statistics, namely, Holland, Denmark, U.S.A. and the various parts of the Empire.
But—the mortality rate from septic abortion was the highest.
Here is uncovered a much grimmer menace to the State than that which shook New Zealand ten years ago. But where are now the women’s organizations, the politicians, the Commission? Is this graver peril to be ignored? What have the Plunket Society, the Women’s Institutes to say about it? The Women’s Division of the Farmers’ Union, the Mothers’ Union, the Society for the Protection of Women and Children, the University Women’s Clubs and associated Women’s
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Clubs of New Zealand, the W.C.T.U., and all those other feminine organizations which have the social and moral welfare of the community at heart — what are their opinions?
In the year ending 31st March, 1935, at least forty-two New Zealand women were killed by abortionists, and a vastly greater number were crippled or injured. Does this mean nothing?
In the past year many statesmen have been constantly deploring the declining Empire birth rate, while the birth rate of New Zealand itself has dropped to a new low record.
The Dominion, of 25th June, 1936, lamented that by 1942 the population of New Zealand would start to go downhill. The writer spoke of population as New Zealand's best defence, and ended by suggesting immediate immigration on a large scale. A subsequent column in the same paper pleaded that " we immediately comb the countries of Northern Europe to find immigrants of suitable mental and physical vitality to stock up the Dominion."
How will immigration help? Suppose that New Zealand can import immediately ten or twenty thousand desirable immigrants; they will come into the country tinged with the same anti-social tendencies of limiting and aborting their offspring, and in twenty-five years' time the
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country will be facing the same old problem of a stationary and an ageing population. No, the remedy must come from within, and it must come quickly. Any talk of immigration as a remedy to buttress up the population is about as logical as ordering a nicely-coloured piece of plaster to cover up a cancer.
A later issue of the same paper (Bth October, 1936) headed five columns with the words, “ Vacant Spaces ; Need for Substantial Migration; Empire’s Security,” and described an organized scheme of immigration advocated by the Associated Chambers of Commerce, then assembled at Wellington. The headlines omitted to state what was mentioned in the text—that if New Zealand wants immigrants she must get them quickly, for within twenty-five years the population of Great Britain will start to decline, and if present trends continue, will go downhill with increasing rapidity, till in A.D. 2036 Britain’s total population will be only 6,000,000.
A provincial paper of the same date, making no reference to the views of the Chambers of Commerce, endorses this statement by publishing a Press Association message lodged in London on 6th October, under the headlines: “ More Babies ; British Empire Need; Decline in Population; Migration’s New Aspect ; No Continuing Surplus; Matter for Conference.”
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It goes on to quote the cabled opinion of the London Morning Post, which reads:
" Hitherto it has been customary to speak of the necessity of filling the Dominion's empty spaces from our own surplus, but the moment is approaching when the Empire will be compelled to review the whole problem in a new light, because in a very few years, so far from having a surplus, we shall ourselves be suffering from a decline in population. Can Britain therefore afford to suffer an additional diminution through migration, lest her man-power and resources become dangerously weak? In other words, ought we to encourage renewed migration until our birth rate shows a sustained and substantial rise? You can only fill up the Empire out of a continuing surplus, and now that no surplus is being produced, either in Britain or the Dominions, the problem has begun to wear an entirely new aspect. Clearly, the solution is more babies, and the subject ought to engage the anxious attention of any future Imperial Conference."
No one with a social conscience can accept these facts with tranquillity. It is not a matter of vital statistics, and it is not merely a matter of Empire. Humanity and civilization are at stake.
In the last hundred years the countries of the West have fought and slaughtered and failed to replace their wasted man-power, while the East—Russia, China, Japan and India —vast, ambitious, aggressive, teeming with surplus population, looks on, patiently waiting. Is our
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Western civilization to be the torch that lights mankind on its march of progress, or is it to be merely another interlude in the history of the world? Some of our thinkers believe that it is already too late. Like Chesterton they accept the inevitability of national decadence: “ When at long intervals of the centuries Christendom grows weak, morbid, or sceptical, and mysterious Asia begins to move against us her dim population, and to pour them westward like a dark movement of matter. . . .”
It is the cult these days for a certain section of the community to say that it has lost all national ambitions, all national anxiety, and that it thinks internationally and only considers what is for the good of humanity as a whole. Such ones might remember that the menace of the falling birth rate jeopardizes not only the British Empire, but all the best elements of socialism and humanity that Western civilization has been building up since the days of Alfred the Great.
But to return to New Zealand and its population problems. The Dominion’s greatest obstacle to sustained prosperity and security, we are told, is lack of population. Yet, having vast open spaces and liberal food supplies the country is practising race limitation (and race elimination) mainly for reasons of individual self-indulgence—-neither men nor women being prepared, appar-
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ently, to practise the self-denial and self-discipline necessary to conserve a youthful, virile race.
Doctors of course are primarily concerned with health—personal health and public health. But health can never be separated from happiness in the individual, and public health can never be dissociated from public welfare. And, from the State viewpoint alone, there are more than enough disquieting factors gravely to concern the medical profession: the larger number of maternal deaths due to abortion, the ill-health consequent on abortion, and the wider effects of the abortion evil on the welfare of the Dominion.
Through the practice of abortion New Zealand is losing some 6,000 prospective citizens yearly; and the authorities are allocating more and more hospital levies, and are planning more and more hospital beds which will simply accommodate a growing influx of miscarriage cases. Yet costly immigration schemes are still talked of. It remains to be seen, of course, whether the immigrants can be secured. Meanwhile, it might be worth while considering whether some of the money could not be better spent in adjusting various domestic difficulties which are primary causes of the decreasing birth rate, and in reserving a working sum to harry the abortionist out of his trade.
Every year now, from thirty to forty New Zealand women die because of abortion; and
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vastly greater is the train of ill-health and misery which follows. But furthermore, the State, which has been denied the children which it might have expected, is now prepared to pay the women responsible for such denial invalid pensions because of their resulting disablement.
Death certificates and hospital admissions, however, will never be able to reveal the true loss, for septic abortion frequently leads to permanent sterility. The new Russia, intoxicated with its freedom, legalized abortion and provided the best medical facilities for its consummation. A startling natural law was then revealed, namely, that the woman who had been aborted several times became sterile. Obviously, virility and infertility cannot co-exist.
The problem of the naturally sterile couple lies outside the scope of this book, but the authors are well aware that this is a not infrequent tragedy and secret grief to a number of childless people.
Abortion in Russia no longer receives State sanction and approval. In New Zealand, of course, the circumstances are not comparable. We do not legalize abortion; we pretend to be unaware of it. Our attitude is that of the Victorian aristocrat whose susceptibilities were offended by any mention of the squalor in which his workmen lived, and so refused to permit any reference to it. Thus in this Dominion, when abortion is
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practised, it is done, not with the aseptic precautions of a surgical operation, but by any methods suggesting themselves to predatory individuals who are willing to take the negligible risks of evading laws, stringent in their nominal penalties but lamentably lax in their enforcement.
It might be well for the authorities to remember, when contemplating National Health Insurance, that if an annual loss of 6,000 or more citizens goes unchecked, before long there will not be enough young workers to assist in providing the £7,000,000 or more which the suggested scheme will cost each year. It is also worth remembering that New Zealand’s state-financed electrical generating plants with their reticulation schemes have already cost one and a half million people over twenty-seven and a half million pounds—to mention one vast State enterprise alone.
Finally, when it is realized that the country’s National Debt (adding Local Body indebtedness) is £224 per head of man, woman and child in this Dominion, we may well wonder what security of man-power—and, more important than manpower, child-power—we can set against it. The National Debt (adding Local Body indebtedness) is still rising, and will probably continue to rise. But to what figure per head will it have risen a few years hence, when we will have a white population of perhaps only 700,000?
CHAPTER EIGHT
THE CHURCH WITNESS
With one exception the Christian Churches have contributed little to the solution of the problem. The Protestant Churches preach a principle of morality, but do not declare themselves specifically on the subject of abortion. Even if they did, would their voice carry to the ears of the people primarily concerned? In many instances they have failed to impress on their own members the Christian ideal of sacrifice embodied in the duties of parenthood. Here and there a fearless voice cries out and a small circle listen, but in this matter, as in others, the lack of unanimity among the Churches nullifies their influence on the community. Yet surely it is not the duty of the Church to ignore a state of affairs where the Sixth Commandment, ‘ Thou shalt not kill,’ is broken right and left within and without Church ranks.
The Neo-Malthusian movement (which openly advocates birth control) was started in London by three professed atheists in 1878, and Europe’s birth rate began to fall in the same year. In 1914
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THE CHURCH WITNESS
a Committee of Bishops of the Church of England issued a Memorandum in which artificial birth control was condemned as ' dangerous, demoralizing and sinful.' In 1930 the Lambeth Conference approved of modified birth control, leaving the ethics of it to the conscience of the people concerned. The change of view is ascribed to the fact ' that at the latter conference there was a larger proportion of married Bishops than at their previous conference.' The ordinary man, wanting guidance on the fundamental principles of right and wrong, is not going to be coerced into believing that truth depends on the celibacy of the clergy. For him, in this matter at least, the Church has failed.
The exception is the great Roman Catholic Church, whose teachers have held their flocks wonderfully to the basic principle that woman's true destiny is motherhood. The Roman Church insists, too, that termination of pregnancy, for any cause whatever—maternal ill-health, invalidism or certain death—is a religious sin on the part of the doctor performing the operation, as well as the husband and wife concerned. And the Church will not permit such an operation or the operation of sterilization to be done in its hospitals, no matter what the religious faith of the patient.
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It is not unfitting that the authors, though not members of this Church, should pay earnest tribute to the effective teaching of the Roman Church in the matter of the child. In all Western nations Roman Catholicism has played an important part in the conservation of man-power. In all homes their priests have taught the principle that the new baby is a ‘ gift from Heaven.’ All doctors encounter in their professional work mothers who are indifferent to motherhood, but it is rarely that they are Catholics. To her Church we must give the credit for the fact that Ireland has the lowest abortion rate in the world. If our Protestant birth rate continues to fall and the large Catholic family is still maintained, history may yet record the fact that the Roman Church proved the saviour of the State.
The doctor who does not hold the Catholic viewpoint, however, is at times wishful that the restrictions of the Church were not so rigid. Particularly does this apply to sterilization. A live mother is better than a dead mother and a hypothetical child, and modern legislation tends towards the principle of prohibiting people from taking undue risks, even (to instance one example) to forbidding venturesome New-Zealanders from flying the Tasman.
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THE CHURCH WITNESS
The pure biologist would say that the principle of killing the mothers but propagating the species is the best method of securing a ‘ young ’ and ‘ virile ’ populace, and would remind us that in many lower orders of life the female automatically dies as soon as she has laid the eggs of the next season’s brood. But can we permit the human mother, with her manifold responsibilities, to follow the example of the insect world?
One has the hope that, sterilization of the female being a relatively new procedure made safe by the rapid advances of surgery, the Church may before long make a new ruling. At present we would submit with all respect that the position is not logical. If a woman in genuine and permanent ill-health may not be sterilized, then the Church’s attitude is not merely that an impregnated ovum must not under any pretext he removed, but that the non-pregnant, ill woman must retain the capacity to make herself more ill, by fulfilling the destiny for which she was horn. In other words, under the euphemistic titles of ‘ sacrifice ’ and ‘ service ’ she may kill herself but not a foetus. This is a materialistic argument which the Church will no doubt attempt to refute from the spiritual point of view. Unfortunately, the solution is no nearer, and meanwhile the practical problems continue.
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CASE XlV—Mrs. X. is a bright, fascinating little foreigner who, at the age of twenty-three, has five children. They have all been breast-fed. The last three are weedy and of poor physique. For the last six months she has had an increasing albuminuria and anaemia. The husband has had relief work, and, more recently, all the children have had whooping cough. The mother needs prolonged rest and treatment, but this it is impossible to obtain. She and her husband are Catholics and will listen to neither birth control nor sterilization. Her doctor is helpless, in spite of knowing that she runs the risk of dying when the sixth child is born; or, at best, of living several years to suffer the distress of tuberculous kidneys.
CASE XV—Mrs. Y. has nine children. She has varicose veins from hips to feet at all times, and when she is pregnant these veins stand out like small snakes. At every pregnancy there is the risk of one of these veins rupturing, or forming the starting point of a travelling clot which will cause her decease to be notified as another maternal death. She has been in and out of a mental hospital and has already suffered extensive damage from attempted suicide. Sterilization has been suggested ever since the first admission to the asylum, but her anxious mind says, ' No, if I let you do that I should worry, worry, worry, because I had done wrong.'
CASE XVI —Mrs. Z., aged 36, suffers from recurring pregnancy toxaemia. She has had this complication with four earlier pregnancies, but is much worse with the fifth. Blood-pressure, dropsy, etc., all indicate danger. The patient is hospitalized somewhere about the sixth month of pregnancy. Despite all care the condition gets worse. An experienced obstetrician
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says, " Madam, it is hopeless to carry on—this foetus will never live to reach a period of viability, and meanwhile you are only risking fits, permanent invalidism or possible death." Whereas a Protestant couple are quite prepared to be guided by the advice of long medical experience, the Catholic Mrs. Z. will remain true to her Church's teaching, and despite all maternal risks will not permit induction of premature labour. The upshot usually is a stillborn macerated foetus, which has obviously been killed by the toxaemia some weeks earlier, but has attained that duration of intra-uterine life which demands its record on the Still-birth Statistics of the country. If born alive, these infants are usually so puny that they die within the first twenty-four hours of life, and then appear in the statistics as neo-natal deaths. For no gain to herself, Church or State, Mrs. Z. has, by continuing the pregnancy, damaged her kidney and circulatory system so much that if she does not die immediately of toxoemia, she dies of a stroke at an early age, and her children go to an orphanage.
CASE XVII —Mrs. ZZ. was a pretty, little consumptive woman, weighing about seven stone. She was obviously not built for maternity. Despite this, she had four pale, fragile babies by the time she was twenty-four. Each one had taken an increasing toll of her strength, and the last had left her almost an invalid. She was terrified of a fifth child, but she was terrified also of birth control. When she suspected the imminence of the fifth she collapsed from sheer fright. Her fears were groundless, but the lesson had been learnt. She requested advice on birth control. This was supplied, and for some years now she has practised it, and only herself,
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her doctor and her God know anything about it It has improved her health and that of her family and one hopes that it has not weakened her faith.
The attitude of the Church—any Church—has in it infinite potentialities. But its power will be nothing unless its purpose is clear. In the past it has alternately advanced and retarded the progress of science. What of the future?
CHAPTER NINE
THE JURY RETIRE
What are we going to do about it? For there is much to do, and little time in which to achieve it.
In 1936 a few earnest doctors hoped that the new Government with its clear and definite mandate from the people to sweep out the obsolete and bring in the new, would do something practical to combat the abortion evil. They asked again for a Government Commission, headed by a Judge of the Supreme Court, which might be expected to grapple fearlessly with the problem and make whatever recommendations it saw fit, whether they were pleasant or bitter to the public palate.
Parliament however has not done quite all that was hoped. As a prelude to what may be the greater task, the Government set up, not a Judicial Commission, but a Committe of Inquiry. Its order of reference was: “ Inquiry into medical, economic and social causes, and advice regarding the best means of combating and preventing . . .”
We are grateful for so much; but four-fifths of the Committee is medical, and the inquiry therefore can hardly disclose anything which has not already been known to the medical profession
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for years. The problem however is not solely a medical one, and the British Medical Association, before officially endorsing any scheme brought forward, will probably insist that legal, economic and social groups make their necessary contributions. And, in any case, these latter interests are not likely to subscribe to a national policy sponsored almost entirely by the medical profession. The problem is too large, and its effects too wide and too serious for any one section of the community to deal with.
The Committee, and those who have given evidence before it, have sacrificed a vast amount of time and much leisure on a task which all will agree cannot be pleasant; and for this they will earn the gratitude of all thinking people.
The primary concern of the authors has been to present the evidence—to state the problem and to stress its importance. The verdict lies with the Public; the evolving of the remedy with others. But years of professional habit make it impossible to abandon the case at a point where diagnosis has been made and no treatment has been started. So we propose to outline the three possible courses which seem open to action. Of these three we believe in the third, and offer three suggested remedies—or at least, three generic ideas, for ‘ the implementing of the policy.’
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The first possible course is to let the present drift continue and produce what results it may. Let the birth rate fall and the death rate rise. The latter is, in any case, already being rapidly accelerated by abortion deaths. Let the future be entrusted to the inevitable biological law of Natural Selection—that any species which cannot prosper in its own environment goes to the wall.
If this is to be the policy, the way out is easy. Coasting downhill, though dangerous, is almost effortless. And the method has one advantage—it would soon stop all speculation as to the future. The future would rapidly disclose itself.
A second possible course is compromise—to leave things in the main as they are, but to remove some of the most glaring anomalies which exist. To permit contraception, but to see that the contraceptives are reliable. To regard abortion as an inevitable accompaniment of modern life and to legalize it so that it can be performed with decorum, decency, and aseptic safety. To let sterilization be as optional as the extraction of teeth, but to insist that both husband and wife agree before the operation is performed on either.
This second course would naturally lead to the same appointed end as the first, but the movement would be more dignified. It would be tantamount to going downhill in second gear—not with the
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brake on, for the brakes would have been already removed. And this, too, would have some advantage: the Gibbon of the future would be able to draw more exact parallels with the decline and fall of the Roman Empire.
And the third possible course is to face the unpleasant facts and try to put our house in order. It is no easy task. It involves more than the mere suppression of an ephemeral craze. It means upsetting the racial habits of a generation.
We have said that we believe this to be the best course, and we believe not only that it should be taken, but that the end it encompasses can be achieved. Here, then, are our three broad lines of approach:
1. Place all the facts in front of all the people. Nothing short of national unanimity can hope to be effective. No legislation can force the great mass of the public against its desire. Not even Fascism can place unlimited sacrificial restrictions on the personal life of the individual unless that sacrifice is voluntary. The exceptions are cases where the sacrifice is involuntary through either mass-hypnosis or mind-conditioning.
Any appeal to the public therefore must be prefaced by instruction on the subject, for it is obvious that New Zealand, as a Dominion, is not aware of the danger in its midst. Human nature will always come to the assistance of any just
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THE JURY RETIRES
cause, provided it is convinced that the cause is just.
Here, it must be agreed, the problem falls into two parts: the effect of the practice of criminal abortion on the individual; and (the logical outcome of the foregoing) its effect on the State. Both aspects we have endeavoured to cover in the preceding chapters—not always separating the two issues, for in many ways they are inseparable. But in the matter of publicising the evidence we realize that only the fringe has been touched and the merest outline suggested. There are yet more facts which frankness might draw out of experience; further deductions to be made from the evidence and clearly illustrated; and other opinions yet to be heard.
The means for disseminating knowledge are vastly greater to-day than they were a generation ago; and, in this matter, so is the need. The dictator States have shown how readily the mass mind can be influenced, and it is the State, here, that is most closely affected. It is for the State, therefore, to make the facts known. But it is too late for squeamish half-measures —all the available facts must be placed in front of all the people.
If criminal abortion can be shown to be the crime and-the tragedy that we believe it is, the
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public will take up the hunt. This, then, may be the new patriotism: not to kill outside the border, but to increase life within. Democracy learns its various aspects of truth slowly, but it is always groping towards that which will develop the fullness of life; it knows the economic negligibility of a corpse.
2. Make motherhood more attractive. It would seem, however, that nothing short of a national conversion would effect this. Too often, in these days, there is no glamour in maternity. The expectant mother more commonly finds that her friends regard her as they would the victim of a practical joke—with a sort of sympathetic amusement. Her husband drops an occasional remark about the expense. The other children are peevish about her restricted activity. She hides her appearance from the public. The whole business carries with it a vague suspicion of something not quite proper. But this is a recent attitude of mind. In Biblical times sterility weighed as heavy as a curse from heaven. Our Victorian grandmothers spoke openly of ' when the babies were coming.' We believe however that the mother of to-day glories as much in the child of her creation as ever did the woman of old; but she has to do it more or less in secret.
THE JURY RETIRES
140
To speak as she feels about her babe would be to invite ridicule.
Is it too late to go back a little and see if some of the lost glory of maternity cannot be recaptured? Cannot motherhood be re-consecrated so that the cheap sneers of the few will no longer embarrass the mother-to-be? It is worth considering. For this fact will always persist, that no miracle of Man's making will ever dim the miracle of the making of Man.
Within such an ideal, instruction to potential parents would be essential. Sex physiology, child psychology, and home science would all have a place in the secondary-school curriculum; and women might well be taught that their obligations are not only to the State, but to their own sex.
But it would appear that the principal contribution of the State under this heading would need to be severely practical. State finance schemes should give preference to suitable and willing parents. State housing schemes should envisage larger families than are normal to-day. State provision should be made for the care of young children during the confinement of their mothers. State hospitals and semi-public institutions should adopt the modern amelioration of labour pains by trained specialists, as the policy of a State obstetrical service.
0
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The law itself might be amended so that there should be a safeguard at least for the woman who is worn or ill by many pregnancies. Termination of pregnancy after dual certification should be possible, and cases which combine medical and sociological aspects could be certified by a tribunal, and no monetary gain should ever be permitted the operator.
Lightening the stigma of illegitimacy is a thing hardly possible by legislation, even were it desirable; but there are aspects of this particular problem connected with motherhood in which the law might assist. The following passage represents the opinion of a Judge of the Supreme Court, and the authors have his permission to print it:
" In ray view the wide publicity given to reports of affiliation cases cannot be excluded as a factor resulting in some increase in the number of illegal abortions in the Dominion. In many cases it is the fear either of domestic or a wider publicity which in a great many instances is the most important factor in inducing resort to an abortionist. If what I have just said be sound —and many years either of professional or judicial experience constrain me to think it is—then it seems to me to follow that if a means can be adopted of reducing this constraining cause it should be adopted. The element of domestic knowledge cannot be avoided but the element of newspaper publicity can, and I think it should be. I would like to see legislation introduced to prevent the publication in newspapers of any Court proceedings relating to bastardy or affiliation. My view in this
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respect will meet with strong opposition from certain moralists who will hold up their hands in horror at what they will call encouragement of vice. They will claim that fear of discovery is a potent element in keeping down immorality. It is no use shutting our eyes to the fact that immorality does exist and will continue to exist notwithstanding this so-called deterring publicity. This is plain from the following passage from page 78, of the 1936 New Zealand Official Year Book: ‘ During the five years (i.e., 1930-1934) there were 9,131 cases of legitimate births within seven months after marriage. Also, 6,191 cases of illegitimate births were registered, and if these latter are all regarded as first births (which is not entirely the case) a total of 15,322 extra-maritally conceived cases is recorded, which represents 33 per cent of the total of legitimate first births plus illegitimate births.’
“ Those are the figures notwithstanding this so-called deterrent publicity, so that the immorality is there and it is futile to shut one’s eyes to the fact. But for the lamentably active practice of illegal abortion the illegitimacy figures would be still higher. Even the most self-satisfied moralist will surely admit that, of the two, abortion is the worse—being compounded as it is of immorality plus the crime of ante-natal murder. The immorality exists whatever the moralists can say and, publicity or no publicity, it will continue to exist. If the publication of all reports of affiliation cases be forbidden, it certainly cannot increase immorality, but it will at any rate remove one of the factors which promotes resort to criminal abortionists. Quite outside the fact that newspaper publicity promotes abortion, there remains also this; that there can be no possible public advantage in reading the unsavoury details of affiliation cases.”
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Thus Press reports of affiliation and similar cases might be forbidden by law; for the fear of publicity is a small factor in inducing morality, but it is a potent stimulus towards the procuring of an abortion.
3. Tighten up the legal fabric. The public in full possession of the facts, and the public mind made up, the law could be further amended in various ways: to make the verdict of guilt depend on a majority jury verdict, instead of a unanimous jury verdict, as now required; to make the sentences for criminal abortion greater; to allow the victim to give evidence against the abortionist without incriminating herself; to permit all trials on the charge of abortion to be held in the four centres before a jury which is segregated from the moment it is empanelled; to clarify the position regarding therapeutic abortion, and possibly to extend the scope of legal abortion to cover the indications already set out by the British Medical Association.
Ergotin and other abortifacients are legally ' noxious drugs.' Yet the sale of abortifacient preparations under the name of ' regulators ' and similar terms is not only legal, apparently, but rife. Surely these ' noxious ' substances could be listed among the dangerous drugs and subjected to the same restrictions of sale.
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The legal fabric made a tighter and more closely woven net, the police could begin a systematic round-up, secure in the knowledge that incontrovertible evidence would secure a conviction. Jails cost the public less than hospitals.
Abortions could be made notifiable like every other illness which is a menace to public safety. At present, the abortionist whose case gets beyond control recommends the calling-in of Dr. A., who may have his suspicions, but no proof. The next time, he or she is careful to see that It is Dr. 8., who is succeeded in turn by Dr. C. If each doctor notified the miscarriage as occurring in the same house, and the Health Department passed the information on to the police, we would no longer have the spectacle that we have to-day—the prosperous abortionist, smug and secure, practising his calling undisturbed in the same house for twenty years or more.
Such then are the elements of the suggested plan. Make the public more apprehensive, make the mother more contented, make the abortionist less secure.
It is not an easy plan. And it does not claim to be completely practical. It deals largely with intangible matters and often dismisses the material for the spiritual. For this there is no apology. There are practical men and women in various
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spheres to whom we may trust the practical issues. But before anything can be done at all, the truth must be known. New Zealand needs education not expedients; a communal resolve to think clearly and act fearlessly in facing this evil; and above all it needs a capacity for self-discipline, without which no Democracy can hope to survive.
APPENDIX
Commentary on the Foregoing Chapters
BY Sir H. Lindo Ferguson, Dean of the Faculty of Medicine, Otago University
AND
Prof. J. B. Dawson, m.d., f.r.c.s., f.c.0.g.,
Professor of Obstetrics and Diseases of Women,
Otago University.
J. Maxwell Clarke, Esq., ch. m. (n.z.),
F.R.C.S. (Eng.), F.R.A.C.S.
Dr, George Home, c.b.e., m.d., d.p.h., President B.M.A
(N.Z.), 1933-34
Sir Hugh Acland, f.r.c.s
136
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GENTLEMEN OP THE JURY
Dr. Doris Gordon and Dr, Bennett have shown trankness and courage in tackling an age-old and world-wide problem. They are not by any means the first to write on the subject and much more will have to be written and said before a final solution of it is arrived at.
All primitive races have met the problem in their own way but in their cases the necessity for action has arisen from the intense struggle for existence and from the fact that their food supplies were not sufficient for growing communities.
Infanticide in China has been practised as far back as we can trace the history of the country and abortion was advocated and practised probably 5,000 years ago.
Aristotle wrote on the subject saying that if the community fixed the amount of property it must fix the number of children. The Australian Aborigines adopted surgical measures for limiting their families and also employed infanticide. The Samoans and other inhabitants of the South Seas all practise abortionand there are stringent laws and penalties for contraception laid down in the Mosaic code.
The problem is by no means limited to New Zealand but is one concerning most of the peoples of our Western civilization. Hitler in Germany and Mussolini in Italy are both alarmed at the declining birth rate of those countries and have inaugurated crusades against contraception and abortion.
The problem of the white countries, however, is a rather different one from that of the aboriginal or nomad tribes, and falls more closely into touch with the decadence of the Roman Empire; but that it should
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be so widely practised in a community not yet one hundred years old is certainly a phenomenon which invites inquiry. Probably the growth of luxury which led to the downfall of Rome is the nearest parallel to New Zealand conditions, and the explanation of the depressing state of affairs with which the authors deal is to be found in the fact that the growth of our standard of living has been more rapid than the evolution of the race to adapt itself to the new conditions. With expanding education, culture, abundance and luxury, men and women wish to control a function which formerly controlled them.
This book contains many serious facts which should be widely known and pondered by the community at large. There will be many who will remain too selfish to deny themselves for the benefit of the future of the community, but, possibly, others will be convinced of the national danger of race suicide.
It will, however, be all to the good that the thoughtless and selfish individuals should have it brought home to them that the risks of abortion are much more serious than they imagine, not only in their immediate but in their ultimate effect.
We sincerely hope that a diffusion of this knowledge may save lives and have some effect in arresting the present downhill career of the race and will ensure a future in New Zealand for our civilization rather than for an Oriental or Teutonic one.
H. L. Ferguson, m.d,,
Dean of the Medical Faculty
J. B. Dawson, m.d., f.r.c.s. :
Professor of Obstetrics
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GENTLEMEN OF THE JURY
The authors of this book, Dr. Doris Gordon and Dr. F. 0. Bennett, have rendered a double service. They have rendered a service to the medical profession by their able discussion of a difficult subject, and by interpreting the thoughts of the profession on this subject; for I feel sure that the thoughts expressed in this book have the endorsement of an overwhelming majority of the profession. Many might hesitate to express them publicly, and very few would be able to express them so clearly, so frankly, and so arrestingly, and yet in a manner devoid of offence.
They have also rendered a service to the public in focusing attention on matters which are of tremendous importance and which demand the earnest consideration of all who are interested in the future welfare of our Dominion. There are sufficient problems discussed in this book to give the thinking man and woman much food for thought.
There is only one section of this book which I wish to single out for comment. I refer to the chapters regarding the law in New Zealand which relates to therapeutic abortion and sterilization. The law admittedly must be conservative, but surely it could be brought more in line with the present medical attitude towards these human problems. Symptoms and disease which indicate operative intervention on medical grounds are too remote for the law to consider. There is a great gulf between the legal and medical opinions at present. It seems very desirable that this gulf should be bridged, if this is in any way possible.
J. Maxwell Clarke, ch. m. (n.z.
F.R.C.S. (Eng.), F.R.A.C.S.
APPENDIX
150
The foregoing appeal to the public mind for a higher national sense of human and of family values is not merely timely—it is urgent. It reveals with great clearness the dangerous population-lapse into which we have allowed this Dominion to slip, merely, it is hoped, from thoughtlessness or want of prevision for the future.
Living things in Nature must either progress or retrogress—there is no abiding standstill. When the birth rate of a country is getting down to near the level of the death rate, that country is coming to its end as a Nation. It is heading for Nature’s Bankruptcy Court.
The appalling destruction of life and property in the World War subverted our sense of human values and imbued this generation with a subconscious spirit of fatalism. The War was a scathing comment on what we were wont to regard as Civilization. Man's mechanisms had got ahead of his moral purposes in life. Man is still the victim of his own machinery, not only in active war but to a large extent also in that absence of outward strife which we try to think of as Peace. The war spirit will remain in this World until it begins to think and to act more in terms of humanity and the human family.
To attain this a beginning will have to be made with the mind of youth, of early youth, even of childhood. The great appeal is for parenthood and in this we should think of fatherhood as well as motherhood. The minds of our very young people, both boys and girls, should be led towards dwelling on the happiness, the sacredness and the racial survival value
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of the family circle. The life-pattern or life-aim of any individual is largely established in early childhood, much earlier than is generally recognized. In the girl-child particularly it should be easy to establish on good foundations an abiding sense of motherhood, which is quite in piece with the instincts of that age.' Childhood has no critical control over the impressions it receives, and when well implanted these are prone to last through life. It is essential, therefore, that they be right in principle.
We live under fear of War in a commercialized, swiftly-moving, pleasure-chasing World and have lost sight of spiritual values—of religion in its fundamental sense—whether of re-ligare, to bind back or restrict, or of re-legere, to regather or reconsider. The faculty which pre-eminently distingushes mankind from the rest of the Animal World is that of inhibition, of self-control, of conscious check on wayward doings and tendencies—the attribute which would maintain him along the path of bodily, mental and spiritual righteousness.
The Puritan moral grip has been solid and wholesome but too stern. Pleasures and excitements are to a certain extent natural and proper—but only as occasional refreshments—not as subsistence, in which case they lead to a world of disillusionment, disappointment and (the word is split advisedly) dis-ease.
This appeal, though a national one, is also preeminently an individual one. "To reform a world, to reform a Nation, no wise man will undertake. And all but foolish men know that the only solid, though a far slower, reformation is what each begins and perfects in himself." So said Carlyle.
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The pity is that man has to be continually reminded of this. The seeds of eloquent argument in these chapters will not fail unless they fall on very stony ground.
George Home, m.d.
In “ Gentlemen of the Jury ” an analysis of the problem of the declining birth rate of New Zealand is set forth clearly, boldly and sympathetically. Every one is vaguely aware of the causes but, thinking as an individual, fails to do anything to abate the terrible menace to our youthful nation. The authors are to be congratulated for having made a valuable contribution to the solution of the problem. Their grave warning will surely stimulate thought and perhaps some collective action.
Hugh Acland, f.r.c.s.
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Bibliographic details
APA: Gordon, Doris C. (Doris Clifton). (1937). Gentlemen of the jury. Thomas Avery.
Chicago: Gordon, Doris C. (Doris Clifton). Gentlemen of the jury. New Plymouth, N.Z.: Thomas Avery, 1937.
MLA: Gordon, Doris C. (Doris Clifton). Gentlemen of the jury. Thomas Avery, 1937.
Word Count
30,758
Gentlemen of the jury Gordon, Doris C. (Doris Clifton), Thomas Avery, New Plymouth, N.Z., 1937
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