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21 February 1995
OUR NEW CONSTITUTION: ABORTION
Television
invites us to submit our suggestions regarding our new Constitution, but I do
not
know where these must be sent. Please forward this to the necessary
authority.
Under the law as it stands, abortions will only be allowed in
exceptional cases. The result is that where an unfortunate woman becomes
pregnant with an unwanted child, the law compels her to give birth to an
unwanted child. If a child is unwanted it is also unloved
and will not receive
the attention to which it is entitled. It may also possibly add to the number
of "street children" about.
Many mothers in this position go to a back street
abortionist, where they risk their future health and even their
lives.
What is so wrong in giving this woman the right to terminate the
pregnancy. The only objection will, I presume, come from the churches
who will
maintain that, by terminating the pregnancy, one is destroying a human life
created by Our Lord. But the churches cannot
claim that they are blameless when
it comes to terminating human lives. Some of the bloodiest wars have been waged
on religious
grounds with no regard to the resultant loss of human
lives.
In New Zealand abortions are performed in the public hospitals for
reasons of mental distress, financial hardship, failed contraception
and such
like. Effectively, it is abortion on request.
There is a panel of two
doctors who have to "pass" these requests and the operation is then done by a
third doctor who has had no
part in the approval process. Further counselling
and contraception is discussed with the patient and her partner.
There
must of course be a time limit in which the operation is performed. I
understand that three months is the accepted period.
My suggestion is therefore
that we adopt the same procedure as in New Zealand in this Country. I have in
mind particularly the
many school children, students and unmarried women who
fall pregnant and then have to endure untold distress and hardships. In many
cases the father has disappeared like the morning mist.
C. F.
MULLER
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