Service, not Servitude
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Extract
Only this much have I suggested, that in view of that which is plainly a higher mandate; in view of the multiple miseries of the syphilitic infant and child, and its degenerate maturity; in view more especially of the fact that not upon us, but upon these miserable little creatures from whom we avert the mercy of abortion, the consequences of our interference fall, we should in all cases in which Nature is trying to cast off a syphilitic foetus thankfully allow her to do so.
Kenealy A. (Correspondence) A Question of Conscience. Br Med J. 1895;2(1815):934.
Extract
The publication of such distressing cases is of great value, as the more widely they are known the more surely we shall receive the support of all good men and women in our efforts to induce Parliament to sanction preventitive regulation, similar to those which, wisely introduced and unwisely repealed, brought, during this too brief period of existence, the priceless blessing of health, not only to men and women, but also to the little children.
Major S. (Correspondence) A Question of Conscience. Br Med J. 1895;2(1814):870.
Extract
. . .That syphilis will convert a Caucasian child into a Mongoloid, however, is a statement ethnologists will hardly accept without further proof. The comparison, indeed, is entirely superficial and misleading . . .
Palmer JF. (Correspondence) A Question of Conscience. Br Med J. 1895;2(1814):870.
Extract
We have received so many letters on this subject, containing, often, repetitions of arguments already used by other correspondents, that we find it impossible to publish all. We print below abstracts of some of the communications.
The Author of Mona Maclean thinks that not many practitioners of her sex will agree with Miss Kenealy’s views. . . .
Surgeon-Captain O’Callaghan, A.M.S., congratulates Miss Kenealy -on her courage in formulating in written words one of the many questions of conscience that have perplexed many minds. . .
Mr. Lawson Tait (Birmingham), while thinking Miss Kenealy quite wrong in her line of action, finds ” T. C. A.’s” letter inconclusive and not philosophic. . .
E. E. W., writing as a woman, dependent on the honest and straightforward dealing of medical men, asks whether, in the case instanced by Miss Kenealy, it was not wrong to withhold treatment from the mother. . .
Mr. A. G. S. Mahomed (Bournemouth) considers that in the case instanced by her, Miss Kenealy failed in her duty, since, though she thought mercurials would improve the mother’s condition, she failed to prescribe them. . .
Mr. T. E. Constant (Scarborough), writing as one who is not a medical practitioner, is stirred by a perusal of Miss Kenealy’s letter to inquire whether ladies are fit for a profession so severely practical as that of medicine. . .
BMJ. (Editorial) A Question of Conscience: BMJ comment. Br Med J. 1895;2(1814):870-871.
Extract
Miss Kenealy is a lady who possesses the courage of her convictions, for few of her brother practitioners will regard her action as anything but morally indefensible. To purposely refrain from interfering to prevent abortion does not differ in principle from actively bringing it about, and the question she has raised resolves itself into whether it is justifiable in the interest of the child to procure abortion when the parents are syphilitic. If we admit the justifiability of abortion in these cases, we must also admit that it is justifiable . . . whenever there is a chance that the child will inherit any tendency to disease-a radical method of eliminating unhealthy strains in the race. As doctors we must regard life as sacred, and it is our plain duty to strive to save or prolong life as long as we can . . . and only when another life is threatened are we justified in contemplating any measure which will destroy life. Whether the life we are striving to save is or is not of value has nothing to do with us.
Welsford AG. (Correspondence) A Question of Conscience. Br Med J. 1895;2(1813):807.