We commend all possible efforts in this direction, and suggest that transport difficulties as they affect the country mother be given special consideration.
To a certain extent transport difficulties can be eliminated by making more use of public hospitals nearest to the patient's residence, or of private maternity hospitals subsidized by the Hospital Board of the district.
Certain general criticisms of the maternity services are elsewhere discussed and certain recommendations are made.
It is in respect of overburdened and debilitated women of those classes who are not in a position to obtain it privately that we have suggested that the State might make provision for birth-control advice.
It is for such mothers especially that we have recommended the establishment of birth-control clinics in connection with our public hospitals.
We realize, however, that genuine economic hardship is not confined to the unemployed, the wives of struggling farmers, and those on the lowest wage-levels; relative to their own circumstances and responsibilities, the difficulties of many women whose husbands are in the lower-salaried groups, or in small businesses, for instance, are just as anxious. For these we should also advocate the extension of the maternity allowance and such further direct financial encouragement of the family as can be devised.
Here, too, is the definite need for domestic help—possibly on a subsidized plan.
Many of these women prefer to make their own private arrangements for their confinements, and to enable them to do so we suggest that further assistance might be given by the provision of more maternity hospitals of the intermediate type, in which these mothers may have all adequate facilities with the right of attendance by their own doctors. Here, too, we believe that proper knowledge of child spacing is most desirable, though we consider that this is a matter for private arrangement.
(2) Removal of Fear of Childbirth.
It has been indicated that whereas the majority of witnesses expressed the opinion that the fear of pregnancy and labour played little part in the demand for abortion, and that the majority of women were satisfied with the help and relief which they received at the time of their confinement, yet there were some witnesses who held very strongly that inadequate pain relief and lack of sympathetic understanding of the individual on the part of the attendants were factors of considerable importance.