MODERN SOCIAL EVILS
SOME STARTLING FACTS “DEGENERATE PEOPLE” (Per Pross Association.) AUCKLAND, this day. Some startling facts concerning present-day social evils were dealt with by Dr. A. B. O’Brien, of Christchurch, in a lecture lo men presided over by Bishop Liston. “In my opinion, it shows us as being a degenerate people,” said Dr. O'Brien in discussing the commission’s recent report on abortion in New Zealand. “Twelve years ago, the population of New Zealand was one and a quarter million, with a birth rate of 29,000, whereas in 1935 the population is shown as one and a half million, with a birth rate of only 24,000. These statistics make appalling reading, and show that we have been decreasing at the rate of 10,000 babies a year for the past 12 years.” Dr. O'Brien said that many people valued personal comfort more than the prosperity of the country. In four years, 112 married women had died from septic abortion, leaving 338 babies. Alarm at this appalling state of affairs had created a desire for birth-control clinics and also for sterilisation, but this tended to become compulsory, and only led to moral degeneracy. Nobody knew enough about the effects to offer a worthwhile opinion about them.
Permanent link to this item
https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/PBH19370710.2.149
Bibliographic details
Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LXIV, Issue 19373, 10 July 1937, Page 15
Word Count
204MODERN SOCIAL EVILS Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LXIV, Issue 19373, 10 July 1937, Page 15
Using This Item
The Gisborne Herald Company is the copyright owner for the Poverty Bay Herald. You can reproduce in-copyright material from this newspaper for non-commercial use under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International licence (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0). This newspaper is not available for commercial use without the consent of the Gisborne Herald Company. For advice on reproduction of out-of-copyright material from this newspaper, please refer to the Copyright guide.
Log in