[To the Editor of THE SPECTATOR] SIR, —The recommendation in the
Majority Report of the Abortion Committee against the provision by public authorities of contraceptive advice except to married women to whose health pregnancy would be detrimental is supported in the Report by the argument that indiscriminate advice would reduce the birth-rate and " lower " the traditional standards of sexual morality in the country. The suggestion that thero- peutic abortion should be made lawful in all cases of pregnancy under marriageable age is rejected on the ground that the girl in such cases is not necessarily guiltless, and should not, therefore, be relieved of the consequences of her act.
These arguments assume that tradition in this respect should be unquestionably accepted, that pregnancy is properly re- garded as a punishment for breaches of the code, and that (in these supposed interests of the State) it is justifiable to keep in ignorance those women who cannot afford to pay for contraceptive advice. There is no recognition of the growing body of enlightened opinion which throughout the present century has been increasingly critical of tradition in sexual conduct or of the patent uselessness of coercion by fear and ignorance even so far as population is concerned. On the other hand, the Report confounds in the same degree of crimi- nality the unqualified and dangerous abortionist with the medical practitioner who does not find a law founded in theology and supported by class interests binding on his conscience.
Neither the problems of abortion nor of population will be solved by methods based on these assumptions and these blind- nesses. Modern conditions call for a sexual code which will obtain the free acceptance of informed men and women. Even if the matter is looked at from the standpoint of international competition (and the present concern with the birth-rate is by no means dissociated from that consideration in many minds), it is clear that a nation which raises a healthy and intelligent population by the method of voluntary parenthood will attain a position of pre-eminent advantage.—Your obedient servant,
85 Fitsjohn's avenue, N.W. 3. ALEC CRAIG.
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