Doctors Discuss Pill

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31764, 22 August 1968, Page 26

Doctors Discuss Pill

(N.Z. Press Association)

WELLINGTON, August 21

The Most Rev. P. T. B. McKeefry, the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Wellington and Metropolitan of New Zealand, has exhorted Catholic doctors not to prescribe the pill for contraceptive purposes and has asked them to think of the “over-all good of society” in the long run.

A statement issued after a conference of Catholic doctors and their wives at Wairakei at the week-end, said that the theological content and implications of the Pope’s encyclical were discussed and full consideration was given to the difficulties confronting CathoUc doctors practising in mixed communities.

Archbishop McKeefry drew attention to the distinction

made in the encyclical between the use of the pill for contraceptive purposes and its use for other reasons. The conference was attended by doctors and their wives, mainly from the North Island, members of the hierarchy and clergy, nursing nuns, and social service workers.

The statement said that Dr J. J. Billings presented a paper on the method of ovulation detection used with a high degree of success in the Catholic Family Welfare Bureau, Melbourne, and said it was likely there would be an increase in instruction by Catholic doctors of married couples in these methods of ovulation recognition. Dr Billings said it was hoped that definite plans would be made for the setting up of centres in New Zealand for this purpose.

A session of the conference was devoted to papers examining various aspects of abortion and one dealt with the effects of legislation introduced in other countries and expressed the hope that simi-

lar legislation would not be introduced in New Zealand. The statement said the psychiatric and other indications usually advanced in support of the termination of pregnancy were critically examined on their medical merits and on those grounds alone were found wanting. The Catholic doctors made it clear that they strongly opposed any alteration of the present law on abortion.

Whether Catholic doctors should prescribe the pill for contraceptive purposes was a matter for the individual conscience, Sir Charles Burns, the master of the Wellington branch of the Guild of St Luke, St Cosmas and St Damian, said tonight. The guild is an association of Catholic doctors.