It is this view which has led the Committee to the recommendations it has made in the discussion of birth-control.
(2) To appeal to the womanhood of New Zealand in so far as selfish and unworthy motives have entered into our family life, to consider the grave physical and moral dangers, not to speak of the dangers of race suicide which are involved.
We can but urge all those who have to do with the education of our youth and the moulding of women's opinion to give these matters earnest consideration, and the Committee is of the opinion that it is necessary to develop the education of young people in biology and physiology in our primary and secondary schools as a foundation for a more rational and wholesome outlook on sex matters.
(5) Contraception.
The practice of contraception is a debatable question, and one on which the most varied evidence has been given.
Witnesses opposed this practice, some on moral grounds, some with the plea for a greater natural increase in the population of New Zealand.
Others again, particularly the representatives of women's organizations, advocated the establishment of clinics for the general instruction of married women in the practice of reliable methods of contraception. They expressed the opinion, and some of them supported their opinions with sound argument and overseas experience, that the instruction of the mothers of New Zealand in the practice of child-spacing rather than resulting in a diminution of the birth-rate might well cause an increase in the size of many families, for, in addition to enabling mothers to plan their families, such clinics also specialize in propaganda calculated to awaken women to an appreciation of the privileges and responsibilities of motherhood.
The Committee agrees that the possession of reliable contraceptive knowledge by the married women of New Zealand would tend to augment rather than to diminish further the natural rate of increase of our population, for an additional factor to those given above lies in the large amount of sterility which follows induced abortion, that most unsatisfactory of all forms of birth-control.
The evidence laid before the Committee shows that in New Zealand every year thousands of women imperil, and indeed negate, their future prospects of motherhood by submitting to the induction of abortion.
It has been shown that abortion is a delayed, dangerous, and unsatisfactory form of birth-control, and it can quite logically be argued that if a reliable and simple method of contraception was known to all married people the abortion problem would assume very small proportions.