THE C.D. ACT.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXX, Issue 9328, 11 October 1893, Page 3

THE C.D. ACT.

TO THE EDITOR. Sir,— your condensed correspondence last week, it is said that the question as to the Contagious Diseases Act ought to be left to the medical profession. Your correspondent is probably not aware that among the most determined opponents of the Act are members of that profession, their opposition being based in part upon the utter futility of the measure, and upon the misleading security thereby offered to men who sin against the law of health. But were it otherwise, were doctors to a man in favour of the Act, no woman who believes in Universal Brotherhood as taught by the law of Christ, would consent that even the most degraded of her sisters should be wronged in order to make it safe for men to sin. In a manly letter which appeared some years ago in an Italian paper, the Emancipazione, the matter was well stated as follows " Tell these gentlemen that we workmen know what is lawful and what is unlawful, what is moral and what is immoral, better than they do. _We answer them that God aud conscience existed before their science, and that if their knowledge produces such fruit the sooner they forget it the better it will be for their own souls and the souls of those whom they endeavour to influence. We poor devils who are constrained to labour for twelve or even fourteen hours a day know too well that food is indeed a necessity, but so long as we have hands to work with we shall never forget that it is a duty to satisfy even that necessity lawfully. And I may also say that we workmen hold that if the infamy which is perpetrated under sanction of law by Government doctors in their Ileal th Bureau were perpetrated upon one single woman only, it would be a worse evil, and carry with it far worse consequences than the physical disease these laws pretend to cure. Go on, worthy Signor J!ditor, fighting against this accursed social sore, and you will see that the approbation of all honest workmen will never fail you.—Yours, for justice's sake, A Working Man." The Act is a disgrace to New Zealand, and the advent of women to political power will be fitly signalised by its immediate repeal. If Mr. Roget would care for further information I shall be happy to send it to him on receiving his address. — am, etc., Mary Steadman Aldis. October 9, 1893.