BIRTH CONTROL

Wairarapa Daily Times, 19 July 1935, Page 5

BIRTH CONTROL

SCENE IN COMMONS LADY ASTOR & LABOUR MEMBER. Press Association Electric Telegraph—Copyright LONDON, Thursday. There Avas a scene Avhen Lady Astor (Gons., Sutton) declared that malnutrition among children As r as not due to poverty, but to people not knotving the right kind of food. (Labour cries of dissent.) Lady Astor: I am talking about Avkat I know.

Mr D. G. Logan (Lab.): So are we. Lady Astor: You are talking about what you think you know. She drew attention to maternal mortality, a proportion of AA'liich she alleged to bo due to illegal operations which could be avoided by birth control. She said that if a woman married a working man on a loav Avage, after having three children she naturally did not Avant. another, and she died avoiding it.

Mr Logan: Hasn’t she a right not to Avant another?

Lady Astor: I am trying to give her a chance. I once did not belie\’e in birth control clinics. When I went and saw appalling things I changed my mind. She begged the House to face the need for proper instruction for mothers.

Mr Logan fiercely denounced the speech. He said this knowledge Avould be one of the curses of the age, and Avas only fit for the gutter. It Avas not the poor, but the Avcalthy, avlio feared children. Lady Astor: I had six.

Mr Logan, in reply to an interruption later, said: I have listened to you until I am fed up. Mr W. McKeag (Lab., Durham) congratulated Lady Astor on her courageous speech. Mr G. 11. Shakespeare (Lab. Nat., Norwich), in reply, said the Ministry of Health refused to be drawn into- the controversy. The policy of the Ministry Avas that it Avas Avrong for a clinic to give birth control advice except AA’here health Avas endangered.