ILLEGAL OPERATIONS.

Otago Witness, Issue 3870, 15 May 1928, Page 77

ILLEGAL OPERATIONS.

SYDNEY JUDGE’S VIEW. PRACTICE OF ABORTION. (From Our Own Correspondent.} SYDNEY’’, April 26. A statement attributed to Mr Justice James, one of the most outspoken members of the New South Wales judiciary, in sentencing a nurse to prison for three years, as a sequel to a girl’s death, following an illegal operation, has caused something of a stir. The mere fragment of his summing-up, which was reported, made the matter look worse, and, in that brief form, possibly left in the public mind an" implication which probably was not intended, but to date there has been no denial of the statement by the judge. He was reported to have said that he often wondered why skilled men were not allowed to perform such operations. Of course, as the law stands, people responsible for them are liable to heavy punishment. One of Sydney’s leading medical men says the legalisation of these operations might be warranted where, for example, a married woman is pregnant, is at the same time suffering from, say, tuberculosis, and -tands a chance, in the ordinary c.-i,. of losing her life. But if Mr Justice James is correctly reported, public opinion generally is against him in this matter. That the practice of abortion must be increasing enormously in the metropolis of Sydney is the opinion of a doctor attached to one of the large State hospitals, which he says, has had forced upon it the improper role of acting as an accessory or cover to an abortionist, by admitting and curing any of his victims who show signs of going wrong after the operation. Patients admitted" to that particular hospital, as a result of these operations, totalled more than 620 in 1926. But, as the doctor observes, patients who seek admission to hospital are probably only a small proportion of those on whom the criminal operation is performed.