COMPULSORY VIRTUE

Evening Star, Issue 21581, 29 November 1933, Page 9

COMPULSORY VIRTUE

QUESTION OF STERILISATION OPPOSED or THE POPE Pres* Asneiatien—By Telegraph—Copyright VATICAN CITY, November 28. Serious tension is likely between Germany and the Holy Sec if the sterilisation law is enforced. German Catholic authorities have been instructed to protest vigorously against its application, as compromise is impossible on the subject. Catholic doctors are not permitted to sterilise and nurses are forbidden to assist at an operation. Those voluntarily sterilised cannot contract valid marriage. It is recalled that the Pope, in a recent encyclical, declared that public authorities do not possess power over human bodies, and cannot directly damage their integrity lor eugenic or any other reason. Man must be free to choose between good and evil. Compulsory virtue was valueless. [A previous message from Berlin read as follows:—The sterilisation law, which will become operative on January 1, applies to sufferers from chronic alcoholism, fecble-mindedness, insanity, epilepsy, St. Vitus’ dance, blindness, deafness, dumbness, and deformity, and is also enforceable when others apply ior sterilisation of mental irresponsibles. Dr Inez (professor of eugenics at Berlin) extolled Herr Hitler as a teetotaller and a non-smoker, and added that the banning of drink and tobacco would greatly increase public health and efficiency. All temperance societies would be amalgamated under the Minister of the Interior.]