WHOSO IS WITHOUT SIN? Casting the Stone.

Free Lance, Volume VI, Issue 291, 27 January 1906, Page 6

WHOSO IS WITHOUT SIN ? Casting the Stone.

CHARITY begins at home, but, as far as can be judged by a perusal of a daily paper report in reference to a meeting of the Wellington Benevolent Trustees, charity stops at the threshold of maternity homes. The "certain class" of maternity cases mentioned in that report, not to mince matters, means those cases in which unmarried women become mothers. If a man has sinned morally, and breaks his leg, he is not debarred from entry into a hospital, but it is clear, from the report referred to, that the single woman who has erred, and who cannot help being found out, merely because she is a woman, is frequently regarded as beyond the pale of official sympathy. * • * There is no provision made for the admission of single women to the State Maternity Homes, although it cannot be proved that the single woman who is "m trouble" is a greater social sinner than people, either married or single, who have no need for a maternity home. It appears that neither the Alexandra nor the Salvation Maternity Homes will take in single women who have erred for the second time, so that, between th© three of them, a patient stands a first-class chance of dying. The State 1 Home is to be kept respectable, and, as highly respectable people need not run the risk of any supposed moral contamination by contact with cases that are not "respectable," and as the State has insisted that all maternity nurses shall be fully qualified persons, the respectable case can be as well looked to outside the State institution as inside it. • * * Of course the righteous — who* have never done a single evil action m

their lives — will argue that the free admission of cases that are not respectable into the home will be an incentive to immorality, but that this cannot be proved is quite clear. As we have said, people who are not unfortunate, but who< may be equally sinning, are liable to uiirow the first stone. The Premier a while ago made a strong point in some of his speeches of humanity for the young, humamtv for the aged, and humanity for everybody. Everybody should include every case of illegal maternity. We have yet to learn that it is either humane or politic to drive any person, of whatever class, into a friendless world, to perish, perhaps, or to be ostracised by the majority of people who' are ready to throw that stone. • * * We do not believe that the Premier intended the homes he was instrumental in establishing for the accommodation of people who> would much rather not be bothered with a case at their own home, and we will not believe that the Premier agrees that a single woman with a baby is sport for chance — an unrecognised pariah. Anyhow, the female sinner is too often the sole sufferer for the sin of two people, and the mere fact that she becomes a mother is proof that the best instincts of woman are not dead within her. If the moral sinner of either sex was refused sanctuary wherever she or he applied for it, the world would be full of outcasts. • • • The fount of kindness too frequently dries up at the sight of the illegal baby, and it doesn't prevent the illegal baby's appearance. If this assumed Puritanism lessened the evil, or if the turning out of sinners to die strengthened the morals of those who permitted the harshness, then it might be well to make a terrible example of the erring woman, and still regard the erring man as merely a "gay dog." It is a subject on which most people are mealy-mouthed, and a subject at which all prudes turn up their sinless eyes, but at the same time tnere is no doubt that we act in an absolutely savage manner to erring people who are no more fallible than people who do not err, or who, if they err, are not found out. • • • If there is any broad humanity m New Zealand, it could not be directed into a worthier channel than the helping of the frail. We are all frail, but we hate to admit it. And, anyhow, we are not always found out. It is no sin against respectable society to give sanctuary to a woman who is generally so ashamed of her sin that she is capable, against her finer instincts, of infanticide, and we are satisfied that any institution established for a specific purpose that refuses sanctuary is guilty of a far greater crime to society than the unfortunate person who pleads for admission in vain.