THE "UNFIT."

Auckland Star, Volume LXV, Issue 69, 22 March 1934, Page 15

THE "UNFIT."

STERILISATION PLAN.

MR. CARRINGTGN'S STAND.

CLASSES OF DEFECTIVES.

We have received the following letter rom tlie Hon. C. J. Carrington:

Your correspondent, Mrs, G. Hamilton Fraser, lias placed me on the horns of a dilemma, because in the first place I

have sufficient respect for womanhood and motherhood to feel reluctant in discussing tl) io delicate subject publicly with a lady; and. secondly, I realise that the nebulous battery of thoughts on Christianity, rationalism, natural law, women in Parliament, racial improvement, etc., used in her criticism of my attitude towards sterilisation, through its very confusion of thought, tends to make confusion worse confounded. I have decided to help my critic by asking her to read her letter in the light of what an eminent authority has stated: "If a Frenchman ceases to believe in the existence of God, he ceases to believe in the binding force of the Ten Commandments, except in so far as these are embodied in the penal law of his country. From the want of swift and unconscious logic, the English mind is capable of holding conclusions long after the principles from which they sprang originally have disappeared, or of holding to principles and yet refusing to accept, on some ground of expediency, or the like, the conclusions which are their logical outcome."

Basic Principles. No well-read cultured person will deny that Western civilisation, which includes our race, is based upon Christ tianity and Christian principles. Justices of tho peace'aflirm this fact whci? they make use of tho Bible for attestation purposes and in the Court. lortunately for mental defects, the great Christian truths involved in the proper solution of tho problem of the unfit not only form part of tho faith held and taught by the Catholic Church throughout the world, but are also contained in the teaching of the Established Church, probably every other denomination believing in Christianity, and are among' the tenets of the revealed religion of the Jews. When we are dealing with a hopelessly sick animal it makes all the difference to our proposed treatment whether that sick animal is a monkey or a man. The commandment "Thou shall not kill" protects a man's bodily integrity as well as his life. The greater includes the less. The State may slay tho guilty as a punishment, it may also mutilate the guilty, when milder forms of punishment are impossible or inexpedient, but tho State may neither murder 7ior mutilate the innocent. Sterilisation of defectives would be a brutal assault on innocent and defenceless members of society, and is not lawful even with the consent of the victim. Defectives, especially girls, require far more protection against society than society needs against them. Those favouring the agitation for sterilisation would be better advised to work for the freedom of tho individual on the principle of returning a defective hs a trained and useful member of the community at the earliest possible moment. From both the humane and the economic standpoint it is better to spend a little more and so make a defective self-supporting, than to save that small sum of money and to be burdened for years with his maintenance in a colony.

Classification of Defectives. I am indebted to tlic Rt. Rev. Administrator of tlie well-kuosvii and. successful Bcsfoid Court Mental \V fare Hospital for Children at DefToi d, Worcestershire, for niucli authenticated and reliable information on this subject, lie states, inter alia, "Mental defectives may be grouped conveniently into the following categories: (1) idiots and imbeciles. —These must be cared loir either privately or, as is generally the case, in a special institution. Their sex instincts are extremely feeble or entirely absent. It would certainly be a waste of time to sterilise them. The females need protection, it is true but they need tnat protection from the uormaiminded but immoral man who may, if not hindered, be a source of expense to the taxpayer.

"(2) The Low-grade Medium Defective. —Ho is of considerably higher mentality than the foregoing, but can never earn his own living, even under supervision and kindly conditions in normal life. He will remain mentally a little child all his life, but may Oc taught simple occupations in a colony home, in sucli a home, keeping the sexes apart is a mere question or architecture and administration.

"(a) The High-Grade Moron. —This type appears ill the spectrum of mental defect higher up than the, low-grade, and before we reach the manual minded child, the child with a special defect, or the backward child. The great majority of morons are well behaved, docilc and useful. But everything depends upon the training that is given. They do,, willingly and contentedly, many of the simpler, more monotonous, and yet essential tasks that the person with

higher intelligence would not undertake. It is for this reason that expenditure of public money for their training is well worth while. If then, the character of the high-grade moron is stabilised and liis slender abilities realised to the utmost, money • spent on his education is profitable to the State. But he needs to have that training in a properly equipped residential welfare hospital." The only good that can come out of this agitation is to focus the limelight of public interest on the pathetic little figure of the moron, and to cheer him with the warmth of public sympathy. Misunderstood from his earliest years, treated contemptuously by his companions, neglected by his teachers, spoilt by his parents, he grows up cowed, untaught, incapable, wayward and undisciplined. Later, if neglected, he will take his revenge on society. The paths of least resistance are the downward trails that lie will follow, and they lead to crime and prison. The cost of his education has been saved, but at the cost of probably his life-long maintenance by the nation. Shall we sterilise the moron and all those who are liable to have defective children ? Defectives are in a large number of cases the children of normal parents. Or shall _we protect them and ourselves by adopting the proved and economically sound methods recommended by eminent authorities and already adopted in the mother Country and America. As the Administrator of Besford Court says, "The advocates of sterilisation have neither sense nor science, nor sensibility on their eide."