STERILISATION OF UNFIT

Evening Star, Issue 21624, 20 January 1934, Page 13

STERILISATION OF UNFIT

INQUIRY IN ENGLAND COMMITTEE’S RECOMMENDATIONS (British Official Wireless.) Press Association—By Telegraph—Copyright. RUGBY, January 18. Among the principal recommendations of the report of the departmental committee on the sterilisation of the unfit are that, subject to safeguard, voluntary sterilisation should be legalised in the case of a person who is mentally defective or who has suffered from mental disorder, a person who suffers from or is believed to be a carrier of a grave physical disability which has been shown to be transmissible, and a person who is believed to be likely to transmit a mental disorder or defect. FULLER DETAILS OF PROPOSALS LONDON, January 18. The . Sterilisation, Committee’s report unanimously recommends that voluntary sterilisation should be legalised, not only of mental defectives, but of persons suffering from grave physical disabilities like certain forms of blindness, deaf-mutism, and haemophilia, which are shown to be transmissible. It says: “ Any measure that limited sterilisation to mental cases would, carry a stigma like certification of the insane and give a quasi-penal character to a measure which may properly bo regarded only as an act of social justice.” Other passages state that. the committee was impressed by the deadweight of social inefficiency 1 and individual misery due to the existence of 250,000 mental defectives in Britain, plus a far larger number of mentally sub-normals, and secondly by the injustice of refusing to those with grounds for believing that they might transmit mental defects the only effective escape from the dreaded passing on of those defects to their offspring. The burden of a large proportion'of mental defectives came from parents one or other of whom was sub-normal, or from families with a history of insanity epilepsy, or some form of mental abnormality. Figures supported the belief that children born in the later years of the war showed an Unusually high percentage of defectives. There was no evidence that parental alcoholism was appreciably responsible fbr children’s mental deficiencies. The report recommends that sterilisation operations should require the authorisation of the Minister of Health, with the support of two doctors. . BLIND GERMAN.STUDENTS BERLIN, January 19. • The Association of Blind University Graduates decided to advise members who are suffering from hereditary blindness to undergo sterilisation voluntarily.