EVIL THAT PARLIAMENT IGNORES

Auckland Star, Volume LXXII, Issue 172, 23 July 1941, Page 6

EVIL THAT PARLIAMENT IGNORES

TWICE within a week judges of the Supreme Court have spoken plainly concerning, the implications of the practice of abortion in New Zealand. The Chief Justice, Sir Michael Myers, had to order the discharge of a woman who had been tried three times. In each trial the jury failed to agree, although, according to the judge, "it was extremely difficult to see any ground for a difference of opinion." He declared that abortion might be encouraged to become a habit if persons practising it, whether for pecuniary gain or otherwise, were allowed to feel that they might do so with impunity. If it became a habit, it was difficult to see how the nation could expect to survive. In Wellington yesterday Mr. Justice Blair remarked that "apparently even educated people appear to consider that murdering a child before it is born does not carry the stigma or horror that murdering a child after it is born engenders throughout the community." The prisoner he was sentencing he described as "one of those unfortunate enough to be found out" Similar remarks have been heard in similar cases throughout the years and it cannot be suggested that the judges of the Supreme Court have not done what they could to direct attention to the persistence of this grave social evil. Yet what has been done to check it? The present Government took the indispensable first step of appointing an investigating commission, which duly reported its conclusions, with recommendations; but there Government action ceased. The people who are *Minn rn £ the ™ a S ni T tude of the evil rightly loos to Parliament for action m the matter. It cannot be said that Parliament has not the time, for it spends time in talking about a hundred subjects less SPS?* - *" 11 - Wha . l f ar liament lacks is the will to act—to insist that the McMillan Commissions recommendations, particularly those relating to the sale of abortifacients, be adopted and enforced, and to consider at least, whether trials on abortion charges should not be by a judge alone