STATE AND PARENTHOOD

Shannon News, 14 September 1926, Page 4

STATE AND PARENTHOOD

MARRIAGE ORDERS. ILL-HEALTH AND UNHAPPINESS. The day when the State may regulate marriages in the interest of an unborn generation is foreshadowed by a surgeon who has been chosen as this year's president of the British IMedicul Association. "The State is beginning to assert its regulative powers in the departments of social and even family life, and its Justification will always be that „he interests of public health override, the.personal interest of the individual." This -was the statement of Mr.R, G. Hongarth, senior surgeon at the Nottingham General Hospital, at a congress of medical men. "We may expect sharp controversy," he added, "if .any when the state concerns itself with eugenics, and asserts its solicitude for'a generation not yet born, Vot by the provision of cradles and nurseries, but even by the very deterlaination of parentage itself. "We have through the country," he added, "an enormous amount of bruised and damagejd humanity, which never enjoyes' robust health, and which, regarded from the purely economic standpoint, never approaches full industrial efficiency because it is never fit and alert. "If we regard the great stagnant pools of ill health and the infinite variety of debilitating ailments, deepseated and chronic, we are driven to the conclusion that physical efficiency is at once the most fruitful cause of individual unhappiness and social discontent."