G.R. Avellar
Avellar GR. Nurses, family planning and conscience. Cathol Nurse 1966 Mar;14(3):38-42 PMID:5182054
Category: Ethics
(Correspondence) Abortion Law Reform
RW Taylor
Extract
No doubt we could eventually be so conditioned that abortion, or the destruction of any other life too for that matter, gave no concern to our professional consciences. It is at least debatable whether any such alteration, not to say lowering, of our ethical standards would benefit either our patients or ourselves.
Taylor RW. (Correspondence) Abortion Law Reform. Br Med J. 1966;1(5489):738.
Medical Issues in Abortion Law Reform
Lord Brain
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
Peter Darby
Extract
In view of the report which you printed (Supplement, 22 January, p. 19) of the Special Committee on Therapeutic Abortion, the following points may be of interest: (1) The Abortion Law Reform Association strongly opposes any special procedure of notification of medical termination of pregnancy . . .
Darby P. (Correspondence) Abortion law reform . Br Med J. 1966 February 12; 1(5484): 423
(Correspondence) Abortion law reform
Wilfrid Mills
Extract
The controversy regarding reform of the laws relating to deliberate termination of pregnancy has not yet been resolved within the medical profession, nor does there appear to have been any statement from a body of practising gynaecologists on their personal attitude to this matter. It was in order to test such an opinion that my colleague Mr. G. S. Lester and I circulated the memorandum which appears below to the practising gynaecologists among the Fellows and Members of the Birmingham and Midland Gynaecological and Obstetrical Society asking for their comments. . .
Mills W. (Correspondence) Abortion law reform. Br Med J. 1966 February 5; 1(5483): 355
The Significance of Conscience
Iredell Jenkins
Extract
. . . the following seems the safest procedure. First, to give an account of the most general, and the most generally accepted, characteristics of those experienced occasions that we refer to as issuing from conscience. This will be brief, evocative rather than analytical in method, and selfconsciously undoctrinaire. Second, to consider what inferences can be drawn from this behavior of conscience concerning the sort of mechanism conscience is, the ways in which it operates, and the function that it fills. . . . In short, in this inquiry . . . I shall reason from what conscience does to what it is; from the effects it produces to the structure it has and the purposes it serves; from its impact on human experience to its role in the human economy.
Jenkins I. The Significance of Conscience. Ethics. 1955 Jul;65(4):261-270.
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.