Freedom of conscience

Press, 9 June 1978, Page 12

Freedom of conscience

Sir,—No-one can make a truly free decision in conscience without full and accurate information. B. Roberts is to be commended for assisting men in making a free, conscientious decision about vasectomy while knowing that it does involve a permanent change to their manhood. It is just as dehumanising as tubal ligation. Abortion is dehumanising because it destroys the function of the pregnant uterus and it is also permanent with regard to that particular pregnancy. The history of birth control in this century makes horrifying reading. In their efforts to “stop multiplication of the unfit” (Margaret Sanger) the controllers had no concern for the illeffects on women. In 1974 Malcolm Potts suggested that women might elect to use no form of contraception but might use menses extraction routinely every month. Development of this degrading practice in New Zealand was stopped by the 1977 abortion legislation. — Yours, etc., G. DALZIEL. June 7, 1978. Sir, — In the discussion on freedom of conscience with regard to the problem of abortion, no-one has said what the term, “freedom of conscience,” means. Do your correspondents take it to mean that people have the right to decide for themselves what is right and wrong for them? If so, the logical conclusion is that there is nothing that can be called right or wrong. A decision would depend on how the person was thinking and feeling at the time, and anyone could use “freedom of conscience” to justify anything they did from shoplifting to murder. Laws would be irrelevant. Freedom of conscience given as a right in one area of life would inevitably be claimed as a right in all other areas. If this is the road we want our society to take, eventually we will all go mad. — Yours, etc.; ERICA JORDAN. June 6, 1978. Sir, — R. P. Dalziel (June 5) lost track of his own argument. He, not I, was in danger of killing conscience. 1 pointed out that his speeding could not be justified, being caught was proof enough. I followed his flight of fancy by comparing his “child” with a living foetus which jumped from its mother’s womb — absurd of course. Too absurd. He killed it off and proved my point that a foetus cannot live outside its mother. He ignored her paramountcy. The law represents working rules formulated at a given time by humans-in-authority who are fallible (especially at 3 a.m.) and thus is subject to change and compromise. While accepted by society, it does not represent absolutes. War trials emphasised the place in law of individual conscience, which present laws deny pregnant women. The Royal Commission, itself fallible, compromised in making life sacrosanct, not at conception but at implantation (P. 192). — Yours, etc., B. ROBERTS. June 7, 1978. Sir, — Sandra Legge assumes I quoted out of context to suit my emotive ends (unstated). She quotes only the second of five conclusions from Chapter 14 of the Roval Commission’s report. The

first states: “The foetus has a status from implantation which entitles it to preservation and protection.” The third states: “The unborn child as one of the weakest, the most vulnerable, and most defenceless forms of humanity should receive protection.” Four and five expand “that protection should not be absolute but should yield in face of compelling competing interests after the nature of competing rights has been examined.” This is a recommendation for therapeutic abortion when needed and available under the new law. In my previous letter I reiterated the Royal Commission findings stating the page number for any reader wishing to judge its context. Sandra Legge seems to have quoted out of context. — Yours, etc., R. P. DALZIEL. June 8, 1978. [This correspondence is now closed. — Editor.]