Church fears of legal abortions

The Rhodesia Herald 30 September 1972

THE Roman Catholic Church is reported to be worried that the Government might legalise abortion and introduce sterilisation to control the population explosion.

The October edition of Shield, the monthly Catholic publication, says: “It is reliably reported that a Sterilisation Bill and an Abortion Bill are in the course of preparation and may soon be published.”

A spokesperson for the Ministry of Health said yesterday that he had no comment to make on the matter at present, as Government policy had not yet been determined.

An editorial in the magazine says there is no demand in Rhodesia for such legislation, and although it is possible to obtain illegal abortions, there has been no widespread attempt to evade the law.

“The countr y is, i ndeed, extremely fortunate in that very few of its children, orphaned or unwanted, are without the protection of the genuine loving care,” it says.

Applications for adoption of European children are far in excess of the number of children available, and African children without care are few and far between, says the Shield.

Father John Gough says in the same edition that “abortion is murder.”

“It is the simple and straightforward killing of a person or what is intended to be a person who is defenceless.

“The embryo or foetus does not ask to be born even conceived, but it lives, boy or girl,” he says.

Father Gough says that sterilisation is medically necessary on occasion “but to sterilise simply to prevent conception is wrong.”

“When this is imposed by law, then the law is wrong,” he says.