Project Administrator, Author at Protection of Conscience Project Library

Medical Issues in Abortion Law Reform

Lord Brain

British Medical Journal, BMJ — British Medical Journal

Extract
There remain for consideration some general problems to which very little attention has so far been paid. It is necessary to distinguish (1) the law relating to abortion, (2) professional ethics relating to abortion, and (3) individual ethical standards. Hitherto (1) and (2) have coincided, in that an offence against the law relating to abortion has also been treated as an offence against professional ethics. Personal ethical standards, however, may differ from those of the law or of the profession as a whole. If the law is relaxed the General Medical Council will presumably have to consider whether professional ethical standards should be correspondingly relaxed. Individual judgements, however, may well show a much wider range than in the past, when doctors who were not opposed to abortion in principle were usually prepared to accept the standards laid down by the Bourne judgement. . . Doctors will, of course, remain free to exercise their own judgements in these matters, and the same must apply to the nurses and others who have to cooperate with them.

Brain L. Medical Issues in Abortion Law Reform. Br Med J. 1966;1(5489):727-729.

(Correspondence) Abortion Law Reform

James Campbell

Extract
In actual fact we know that many primitive tribes have practised abortion and child destruction for long periods. I suggest that Mr. Mills should examine the cultural origin of his feelings, then perhaps he would come to the conclusion that there are many occasions when termination of pregnancy would prevent many years of suffering, so that neither revulsion nor guilt need be felt.

Campbell J. (Correspondence) Abortion Law Reform. Br Med J. 1966 Mar 05;1(5487):613-614.

(Correspondence) Abortion Law Reform

Denis Pells Cocks

Extract
Nowadays therapeutic abortion is performed relatively rarely for organic disease, and the indications are largely psychiatric with often associated secondary social factors. Whilst some clarification of the old law may be necessary in order that all can understand the situation, we must beware lest in reframing the law this results in the opening of the floodgates in the demand for termination on more liberal grounds.

Cocks DP. (Correspondence) Abortion Law Reform. Br Med J. 1966 Feb 26;1(5486):539.

(Correspondence) Abortion Law Reform

Robert Burns

Extract
It seems reasonable, therefore, to conclude that an increasingly large number of therapeutic abortions will be dealt with privately in the future. I am therefore perturbed that an attempt is being made to limit the activities of medical practitioners who are not in the N.H.S. I refer to the desire of Lord Dilhorne to make it necessary that at least one of the two doctors who will take responsibility for a therapeutic abortion must be in the N.H.S.

Burns R. (Correspondence) Abortion Law Reform. Br Med J. 1966;1(5485):482.

The evolution of a social obstetric conscience

C.H.G. MacAfee

Extract

. . . The title of my lecture may sound peculiar, but as my story unfolds I trust that the need and importance of public interest in obstetric practice will become apparent. The art of obstetrics is age old, and the risks to mother and child as old as recorded history, but the science of obstetrics and the appreciation of the necessity for active measures to reduce the risks are of relatively recent origin. Many factors contributed to this lack of social conscience, factors which may seem strange to a public accustomed to see all the details of a confinement portrayed in the cinema.

MacAfee CHG. The evolution of a social obstetric conscience. Ulster Med J. 1949 November; 18(2): 129-138, 139-142.

Belsen Camp: A Preliminary Report

WRF Collis

Extract
[The following extract from an appreciation of the situation by the senior medical officer after 24 hours’ contact with the camp will serve to illustrate the state of affairs at the beginning.] . . .

. . .It has been found necessary due to the lack of doctors and nurses
from home to employ German doctors and nurses. No doubt the additional medical skill thus added have proved beneficial in a general sense, but the patients are naturally terrified of being looked after by Germans
even under supervision, remembering how they were tortured in the past. It has been established that patients were often given intravenous infusions of benzol and creosote by the German medical staff, so that now, when the doctors approach with hydrolysate for intravenous infusion, the patients often cry out begging not to be taken to the crematorium. . .

Conclusion
This is a brief preliminary report of Belsen Camp to give the medical profession in Britain some idea of the medical problems involved. It is a complete understatement. No words can describe the stench of decaying faeces, rotting bodies, and burning rags, which in the first weeks one could begin to smell miles from the camp, and it can but be left to the imagination of the medical men who read this article to appreciate what the doctors, nurses, and students at Belsen have endured and accomplished. Since the camp was taken over from the Germans more than 20,000 internees have been buried; some 30,000 are left, of whom 11,200 are in the main hospital area. . . .

Collis WRF. Belsen Camp: A Preliminary Report. Br Med J. 1945 Jun 09;1(4405):814-816.

The Problem of Social Control of the Congenital Defective: Education, Sterilization, Euthanasia

Foster Kennedy

Extract
. . . What to do with the hopelessly unfit? I had thought at a younger time of my life that the legalizing of euthanasia . . . Now my face is set against the legalization of euthanasia for any person, who, having been well, has at last become ill . . . But I am in favor of euthanasia for those hopeless ones who should never have been born-Nature’s mistakes.

. . . should the social organism grow up and forward to the desire to relieve decently from living the utterly unfit, sterilize the less unfit, and educate the still less unfit-then the Law must also grow, along with the amplitude of our new ideas for a wiser and better world, and fit the growing organism easily and well; and thereafter civilization will pass on and on in beauty.

Kennedy F. The Problem of Social Control of the Congenital Defective: Education, Sterilization, Euthanasia. Am J Psychiatry. 1942 Jul;99(1):13-16.

The evolution of the conscience in civilised communities: In special relation to sexual vices

R.A. Fisher

Opening

(Paper read at the International Eugenics Congress, 1921) That the mental and moral qualities of mankind are inherited to the same extent as are the physical characters is now so firmly established that we have some difficulty in realising the opposition which early investigators encountered in establishing this fact. . . .

Fisher RA. The evolution of the conscience in civilised communities: in special relation to sexual vices. Eugen Rev. 1922 October; 14(3): 190–193.

The Vaccination Acts: the conscience clause

John C. McVail

Extract

Closely interlinked with the subject of a Revaccination Act is that of the Conscience Clause. When the Royal Commission on Vaccination published its final report and boldly recommended a Conscience Clause, a great part of the medical profession and probably also of the public were startled at what they regarded as a lowering of the vaccination flag. Some opponents of vaccination appeared at first to be jubilant over what they professed to regard as an antivaccination victory. . .

McVail JC. The Vaccination Acts: the conscience clause. Br Med J. 1903 January 17; 1(2194): 142–145

(Correspondence) The “conscience clause” of the Vaccination Act, 1898

C. Killick Millard

Extract

The question of retaining, mending, or ending the above clause will shortly have to be settled. There are many medical men in favour of, and seriously advocating, the last alternative. They argue (i) that a “conscience clause” is altogether wrong in principle; that it is an anomaly without precedent, and opposed to the spirit of all other compulsory legislation; and that if vaccination is to be compulsory, it should be compulsory for all. (2) That the ” conscience clause ” is greatly abused, and that its administration is becoming a farce. (3) That it has not succeeded, in the sense of securing more vaccination. . .

Millard CK. The “conscience clause” of the Vaccination Act, 1898. Br Med J. 1903 January 3; 1(2192): 49.