'Big profit in abortion’

Press, Volume CXV, Issue 33791, 13 March 1975, Page 22

'Big profit in abortion’

(New Zealand Press Association) AUCKLAND. Abortion clinics in the United States are co profitable that in some cases they become public companies, and their shares are bought and sold on the stock exchange, says Dr C. F. Gerster, vice-president of the National Right to Life Association of America.

She is in New Zealand to address five national rallies by the local association.

More than 20 American foundations, including the Ford and Rockefeller foundations, had put millions of dollars into the clinics in recent years, she said.

“New Zealand is now where the United States was in 1967 concerning abortion, but this country still has a chance.” A decision of the United States Supreme Court a few years ago had in effect legalised abortion up to the moment of birth, and abortion on demand was in force in all 50 states, said Dr Gerster. She emphasised that the organisation opposed not only abortion, but involuntary euthanasia. “We have to confine ourselves to the life aspect, and try not to take sides, because this could mislead our supporters.” She had spent a good deal of her time giving sex education classes to school pupils, she said, but she had found to her disappointment that increased sex education and availability of contraception

did not lower the number of illegitimate births.