SLUMS AND STERILITY

NZ Truth, Issue 910, 5 May 1923, Page 7

SLUMS AND STERILITY

Overcrowding and the Kiddies WHY WOMEN WONT HAVE CHILDREN. Population on the Perish. Among those who have recently been blithering in Auckland anent our lack of population and the fall in the birthrate is the blatant Booth man, who, after saying nasty things about the women of New Zealand, held up the memory of his mother, who had eleven children, as an example of motherhood. No one will disagree as to the value to a community of a woman who will produce eleven children for the good of her country, but no doubt the late and revered wife of the famous Salvation Army "general" had a roomy house to live in and no shortage of the necessaries on which to feed her young ones. Booth's latest blither is merely pointed as a moral to adorn a tale— a tale of woe and suffering. There are in New Zealand thousands of wives who are forced to herd in rooms with the children they have, and who are utterly unable to get into a home of their own, owing to the shortage of houses and the limitless rents of those few family dwellings which may from time to time become available. In their CRAMPED AND SORDID SURROUNDINGS, with scant space for bedding and scant funds for food, these women are naturally not eager for continuing the functions of motherhood, to bring into their world of squalor more babies to be crammed in cribs, and perhaps coffined in. Infancy owing to lack of sanitation and fresh air. And who can blame them, when the, women of the well-to-do, who have fine, spacious homes, refuse the "burden" of motherhood for more selfish reasons! It is all very fine to preach of the virtues of, and the necessity for, maternity, but the very Government which is crying out for population ; and spending thousands of pounds in bringing out immigrants from overseas (and very doubtful immigrants, too, a i percentage of them have proved), is discouraging the natural increase of the population, murdering * maternity and opening the road to shameful prevention and the slaughter of the unborn by its damnable apathy in the matter of providing housing. And in this it is aided and abetted by the average landlord, who has a constitutional hatred of children and will sooner have his house empty than occupied by a tenant who has been so thoughtless as to obey the command to "increase and multiply." Lack of housing creates slumdom — and slumdom in its turn creates sterility. And in New Zealand to-day the abortionist and the seller of "preventatives" flourishes throughout the land. ! Is it possible that the Government is blind to what is going on, to the artifices which are being employed 1 to restrict the population of which this and all new countries are in such desperate need? If so, it is a dense and ignorant Government; if not it is a depraved arid a degenerate Government, as criminally careless of the welfare of the country it is supposed to guard and develop as was ever any Government of the ancient empires which went to ruin and decay THROUGH SIN AND SLOTHFULNESS. The sin of artificial birth restriction is rampant in "the land; the crime of abortion is the most common and the most difficult to detect of all crimes on the calendar. Ask any doctor, ask any of the nurses in the hospitals of which wrecked womanhood, the aftermath of abortion, passes through In a constant stream on its way to sterility and the scrap heap. Look into the windows of some of our "chemists' " shops and see there, openly flaunted in the disguise of "health preservers," the pdtions, the pills and the instruments which every person not entirely ignorant of such matters knows are intended to be used for the prevention of conception. Ask the police concerning the scores of professional abortionists in each city, whom they are striving hopelessly to detect, but who are surrounded by such nets of secrecy and cunning that it is only on the comparatively rare occasion of the death of a victim that they can bring them before a court of justice — in which eventuality, in nine cases out of ten, guilty or otherwise, the jury returns a verdict of "not guilty." Such is the way in which abortion is now regarded — a crime looked lightly on by reason of Its unashamed prevalence! And yet our hypocrlticaf rulers cry "Population," while they close up the avenue by which population must properly enter — the home.

The questions of morality (or immorality), maternity and housing go together and are inseparable. It is only a Government which is criminally neglectful of the welfare of the country that can shut its eyes to the fact. And if the present Government is not blind to the fact, then the greater^ the shame and the disgrace to it for permitting the existence of the present terrible situation, a situation that is not only now bleeding the country white but which threaten* a future of permanent sterility.

At one time it was only the wives of the men of means, too busy in the pursuit of pleasure, and unfortunate girls with lovers able to pay the price who sought the services of the professional abortionist, or who gladly apent money on the potions, pills and instruments aforementioned to render the services of the abortionist unnecessary. But such resources have a way of advertising themselves, and now the means of defrauding nature and strangling maternity are cheaper and within the reaah of almost all. and an inability to recognise and utiliae auoh resources is deemed "ignorance." To even the very poor — those who her* in slums — the knowledge of abortion has penetrated, and many an unfortunate woman, terrlfled at the prospeot of another experience of a miserable child-bed (supposing there to be such a thing as a bed, and not merely a bundle of dirty rags on a damp floor), will, if other means be lacking, herself use the CRUDEST AND MOST- DANGEROUS MEANS to escape more motherhood, and willingly risk death in doing so. Sometimes she not only destroys the dawning life, but her own in the bargain. But the greatest menace of all Is that a woman who has once been aborted will run the risk again and again to avoid motherhood, until she either kills herself (which Is astonishingly seldom, considering the extent of th»? practice) or eventually becomes sterile. Thus we have coming into existence tho danger of a permanent conspiracy of abortion and sterility. To paraphrase Oliver Goldsmith; 111 fares the land, to hastening Ills a prey, Where children are regarded "In the way." But what does it matter to our preppnt Government? Go anywhere you like in the country and you will see most oxcellent housing— for pigs and cattlei