Bishop Advocates That Unfit Be Sterilised

Chronicle (Levin), 30 November 1949, Page 5

Bishop Advocates That Unfit Be Sterilised

LONDON, Nov. 28. "The time is quickly coming when Sterilisation of the unlit will have to be essential in our social organisatiou, " J said Dr. L. W. Barnes, Bishop of Bir- ; mingham, addressing a Rotary Ciub hincheon, Ile said: "Hueh sterilisatiou may well be the complement of the welfare Btate. " Dr. Barnes continued: "The gooitliving, honest and hard working classes must be preserved vvhether rich or pour, but wre must get rid ofs the sloveniy, vicious and idle wasters in the eornmunity. Unfortunately, the welfare StateVas only too likely to encourage their increase. The welfare State was a great achievement and would douljtless be followed elsewhere, but social reforms oreated new situations in which new and sometimes , troublesome problems arose." • Britain, he said, was beeoming overpopulated. The task of buying more for a virtuallv bankrnpt country. food from overseas was more ditficult "We look like being permanently the paupers of the English-speaking world. We need to restrict our population. People must be educated to have smaller families, and we must have medically controlled sterilisatiou of the grosser f'orms of unfitness. " 1 Dr. Barnes added that many were beginning to think that medicahy. coutrolled euthanasia for defeetive infants should be an element in our j social policy. He had inet mothers ' of such children who were thankful | when death brought release. Replying to questions, Dr. Barnes 1 said he referred to the sterilisation of ! the unlit— the G to 10 per cent who were mentally below par. Large-seale sterilisation of good citizens was an absurdity, and beeause of that he spoke of the neeessity for educating the people to have smaller families. Britain's moral prestige was such that if they set an example to the world, other races, when they saw the neeessity for it, would follow. ^