[To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.] SIR,--I should like, if
I may, to correct one statement in your admirable article on the Sterilization Bill. Your contributor observes that " sterilization, like abortion, is, even when per- formed at the request of the subject, illegal." I was recently commissioned by the Eugenics Society to investigate the law as to sterilization and to produce a pamphlet upon it, and I have no doubt that your contributor's summary of the law is inaccurate.
Abortion is specifically forbidden by s. 58 of the Offences Against the Person Act, whereas the most that can be said of sterilization is that performed by certain methods it might be an offence under one of the other sections of that Statute— sections intended against criminal acts of an entirely different character. It is also possible that sterilization might constitute an unlawful conspiracy to do an act mischievous to the public : but the general result of my investigations was that it is quite uncertain whether the sterilization of an adult is any crime at all.
In point of fact the operation has been performed by private practitioners without any prosecution or threat of one : but the legal position is so obscure that the performance of the opera- tion for eugenic reasons is not likely to be permitted to medical men employed by public authorities or institutions, so that in effect there is one law for the poor and another for the rich.—
I am, Sir, &c., CECIL BINNEY. 7 Kings Bench Walk, Temple, B.C. 4.
Previous page
