CONDEMNATION OF ABORTION

Southland Times, Issue 23181, 23 April 1937, Page 9

CONDEMNATION OF ABORTION

CATHOLIC BISHOP DESCRIBED AS SOCIAL EVIL A call for immediate action in dealing with the state of affairs, disclosed in the report of the special committee set up by the Government to investigate the incidence of abortion in New Zealand was sounded by the Roman Catholic Bishop (Dr J. M. Liston) in a sermon at St. Patrick’s Cathedral, Auckland. Abortion was murder, Bishop Liston said, and Parliament had a bounden duty to put a stop to criminal slaughter. “Herein is our shame,” Bishop Liston said. “We are the youngest of nations, of good stock, united possessors of a rich and lovely land, with an ideal constitution to make for justice between man'and man, with unfettered power to frame our laws—and we have turned to lawlessness, with several thousand murders in a year. The victim in each case is a human thing, a child with a right to life. “Responsible authorities, with a deep respect for human life, all honour to them, strive vigorously to make the roads safe for us, and to stamp out an epidemic, but here is slaughter on a large scale. What profit for us as a people in good seasons, . guaranteed prices and markets, housing schemes and all the rest, if, as the facts and figures of the report indicate, we are going in for this sheer savagery of abortion? Duty of Medical Profession “The report should arouse all men of goodwill to the suppression of this social plague. Appeal is very properly made ■to the power and influence of religion. That is not wanting. But let the whole medical profession, too, join in the campaign for a change in debased public opinion and for a proper understanding of what Nature allows and Nature forbids. It will thus renew one of its best traditions, respect for human life. “Let the Government deal energetically with this grave evil. It will have the support of all but a few in our land. By all means let us better the world by. wise laws and just dealing between man and man, so that the earth may be filled with many happy families, but let all be clear that these sins of contraception in married life can only add to the miseries of man. Blow at Moral Qualities

Bishop Liston spoke of the artificial prevention of births in married life as “a perversion, ever and under, all circumstances immoral, a breaking of a law graven on the human heart by the Creator, and an attack, on the happiness of husband and wife that can only end in misery. . “Quite obviously,” he continued, if few children are born in our land they will be heirs of the past, and not moulders of the future. How can New Zealanders hold New Zealand in that way? The nation that puts obstacles in the way of the stream of new. life coming into its world will go down, not merely because its numbers will decrease, but even more because it will fail in moral qualities. “Here is a task not only for fathers and mothers themselves, but also for our legislators,” Bishop Liston concluded. “Let Parliament deal, as with a most dangerous poison, with birthcontrol clinics and all contraceptive devices, all without exception, and by just and wise laws make large families possible and ease their burdens.”