FACTORS OUTLINED.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVIII, Issue 267, 10 November 1937, Page 20

FACTORS OUTLINED.

PREVALENCE OF PRACTICE. SEX EDUCATION FOR YOUNG. Frankness wan the keynote of a discussion by the Auckland Diocesan Churchmen's Association last night of th« problems of criminal abortion in New Zealand. Archbishop Averill presided. Dr. J. W. Craven, medical superintendent of the Auckland Hospital, •peaking on the revelations of the McMillan report, distinguished the criminal practice iTom abortion as a hospital operation carried out to save a woman's life. Dr. Craven stressed the fact that It was ) life that was being killed in a criminal abortion case. Of the factor of inadequate housing that was placed by the commission among the causes of the crime, Dr. Craven remarked that home life seemed to be rapidly dying out in New Zealand —eo many people were going into flat or boardinghouse life. The doctor commented strongly on the fear of disgrace entertained by an unmarried girl who became pregnant. Here, he thought, was one blot that should be removed from the social system as soon as possible—the attitude that if a single girl wae found in this riition she should be thrown out on the street. Laxity of morals, declared Dr. Craven, was the greatest cause of abortion ever having to be thought of by the unmarried. It was the duty of parents—in fact of everyone—to teach to children ■ex. education and what it meant. Archbishop Averill asked what was going to become of the population of the country If abortions were practised at the present rate. Mr. H. W. Manning, moving a strong resolution denouncing the criminal practice, exprcMed the opinion that legislation alone would not put a stop to the evil. Perhaps a start should be made in the schools, where there could be inculcated in the children a love of children and the realisation of the joy and love which children brought to homes and to parents.