History teaches us we must not give an inch to the culture of death

Anne Barbeau Gardiner, an emeritus professor of English in New York, has written a stunning review of an important book entitled "Cultures of Abortion in Weimar Germany". Here are some extracts from her review, which I recommend you to read in full:

• "In her research for Cultures of Abortion, Cornelie Usborne examined literary works, movies, trial documents, medical records, social workers' notes, police interviews, and newspapers from the years of the Weimar Republic, 1918-1933 ... Although [Usborne] is pro-abortion...her research is valuable because it shows how the groundwork for Adolf Hitler's eugenic-abortion policies was laid."
• "[C]ontraception was 'big business' in Germany prior to World War I ... [I]n 1927 the law was changed to allow contraceptives to be advertised, though some of these, like the uterine coil, were also abortifacient."
• "[T]he Weimar Republic was distinguished by 'the lowest birth rate in the Western world'"
• "German law on abortion became 'one of the most liberal in the world' because doctors could easily convince officials that any abortion was necessary for 'health' reasons."
• "Deceptive language about abortion was also used in the Weimar Republic by communist and socialist novelists, poets, dramatists, and filmmakers, all of whom advocated 'medical, social and/or eugenic abortion'"
• "The 1929 play Cyankali §218, written by the socialist Fried­rich Wolf, was supposedly a docu­drama about abortion intended to rouse the audience for mass protests. Yet it was based on a lie ... [T]here [is no] evidence for the allegation in the play that 10,000 women died annually from 'back-street abortions' ... Filmed in 1930, Cyankali §218 was used by socialists and communists in their election campaigns."
• "[W]here contraception is rife there will also be the widespread practice of abortion and a growing pressure for its full legalization ... It is crucial, then, to oppose the contraceptive mentality that makes abortion inevitable"*
• "[T]he road to Hitler was paved with abortions. The Weimar Republic was a society committing suicide in slow motion. It could neither stop the killing of its unborn children nor control the degrading hedonism that accompanied this practice ... It was so weak it easily caved in when confronted with a fiercer form of that same culture."

This book and Professor Gardiner's review of it are very relevant to the current British government's plans for children's education. The governments which preceded and followed the Weimar Republic (the Second Reich under Bismarck and Hitler's Third Reich respectively) used laws to control and thereby undermine Catholic parent's education of their children. Under the Third Reich, a law against home-schooling - which is still being enforced today - was passed in order to ensure that children received Nazi indoctrination, including Nazi anti-life and anti-family ideas. Pope Pius XI protested against these laws, writing:

"Catholic parents'...rights and duties as educators, conferred on them by God, are at present the stake of a campaign pregnant with consequences ... [I]it will be every one's duty to sever his responsibility from the opposite camp, and free his conscience from guilty cooperation with such corruption. The more the enemies attempt to disguise their designs, the more a distrustful vigilance will be needed, in the light of bitter experience."

After the defeat of Nazism, parents' right to choose the type of education for their children was enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) in order to prevent such indoctrination by future governments. Many parents in Germany and Britain today wish to home-school their children because of anti-life and anti-family indoctrination in state-regulated schools. The British government's Children, Schools and Families bill seeks to weaken parents' control over their children's education by:

• imposing sex education in all primary and secondary schools following the national curriculum, including Catholic schools, which entails anti-life and anti-family indoctrination
• abolishing the parents' right to remove school-children of 15 years and older from sex education classes
• establishing strict and intrusive regulation of home-schooling, including direct access by regulatory officials to home-schooling children, bypassing parents.

We must not give an inch to the culture of death. The second reading (the first main debate) on the Children, Schools and Families bill will take place in the House of Commons on Monday (11 January). Please email your MP immediately to urge them to speak out against the government's plans.

*which reminds me of the admission by Dr Judy Bury, former Director of Edinburgh Brook Advisory Centre, that: "There is overwhelming evidence that, contrary to what you might expect, the provision of contraception leads to an increase in the abortion rate." (The Scotsman, 29 June 1981)

Comments on this blog? Email them to johnsmeaton@spuc.org.uk
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