A RACIAL DANGER
[To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.] SIR,—The main objections to the sterilization of the unfit come from those who have religious rather than economic reasons for their opposition. Their chief arguments are to be found in a very full article by Lt.-Col. O'Gorman in the Catholic Medical Guardian, October, 1923. These arguments rest primarily upon the following propositions :— 1. That human laws are valid and equitable only in so far as they correspond with the natural law, and are null and void if they conflict with it.
2. That in every insane and defective-minded individual the soul " is present, concealed as it were behind the outward manifestations of the diseased physical organs.
My answer to the first proposition is that if we are to appeal to Nature. as a .guide we shall have to adopt very drastic means of preventing the unfit reproducing their hind ; for throughout the natural world the unfit are ruth- lessly destroyed, and even amongst human beings this is the case, except where religious teaching intervenes.
To the second proposition I reply that until the male and female germs meet there is no life to harbour a soul. Those who urge that the feeble-minded should all be segre- gated in asylums in effect demand that these male and female germs should be kept apart by. means of brick walls. The advocates of sterilization adopt a far more humane course. They recognize fully that in many cases segregation is absolutely necessary for the protection of the public and for the protection of the feeble-minded individual. But they also recognize the undisputed fact that there are many feeble-minded individuals who are only a danger from the racial point of view. In these latter cases the advocates of sterilization urge that the use of a ligature, or the division of ducts, is more humane than permanent segregation behind: brick walls. They say that when such simple methods now exist, thanks. to the development of surgical skill, the nation has no right to deprive poor weak-minded creatures of their liberty by shutting them up in asylums for no other purpose than to prevent procreation.
It is sometimes argued that to release these poor creatures after this operation would lead to irregular living and sin. Surely, the essence of the religious idea of sin is the intention or desire and not the act, so that from this point of view forcible restraint does not prevent sin. Nor is there anything in the argument that if these defectives were at liberty they Might become the victims of the evilly-disposed, unless it is suggested that every feeble-minded person is always to be locked up. The mere fact of having had the operation in question will have no effect on the actions of persons. so deliraved as te;.take advantage of the feeble-minded ; on the other hind, the operation would at any rate protect these unfortunates .from the worst restilti of their want of inowledge and power of control. At present feeble-minded women are constantly becOming the motheis of illegitimate
children. -
It is not proposed that press gangs should tour the streets, seizing perSoni for sterilizatiOn. A- board of experts would hair' e to decide ,;ii every Case, and ample precautions would
be taken to prevent any risk of unwartantable interference with individual rights.
It seems a. strange commentary on our civilization that so many splendid buildings up and down the country are occupied by the unfit, while so many of the fit are condemned to dwell in hovels and to work to provide the means for keeping the unfit in these palatial buildings. Had our ancestors grappled with the problem years ago, we should be in a very different plight to-day, and it is our duty to do what is in our power to save our descendants. They will have heavy enough burdens in all conscience as a result of the Great War, without any additional load which might be prevented by so simple an operation. At the same time many feeble-minded talk could be saved from the threat of life imprisonment and allowed to carry on simple tasks amongst their own people.—I am, Sir, fie.,
BRUCE BRIXF:-PORTER.
6 Grosvenor Street, IV . 1.
• [We have not ourselves noticed that religious scruples play any-. serious part in the objections raised to sterilization. We say this as a mere matter of observation, not because we disagree with the purpose of Sir Bruce Bruce-Porter's letter.—En. Spectator.]
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