, No doors closed to women

MUTT TITUTETE TEC UnC INU TC NTO WOOT CIRC GCI TOUT COIL TE TLEC ULI CAL LULL UL ULL iL

WOMEN'S —

news and views

RUDI OT MMT Tt ft MT ee EO Snr en get get)

.

: All occupations are open to Soviet women without their being
denied the right to marriage and motherhood. Here is Delilah
Ashirbekova, designing engineer in a Soviet Kazakh plant.

ONE OF my neighbors
dropped in ‘for a visit the other
vening and told me of some
of her problems in trying to
‘aise three boys who are now
reaching the difficult age of
adolescence. As her husband is

- 4N engineer on one of the deep-
Sea boats the famiy is often
thout a father for four or
nths at time. Naturally,
he does get into town he
So happy to see his young-
TS Once again he tends to be ©

er-indulgent and discipline
80es out the wir ‘

other is now faced with
Problem of ‘having her boys
l rather resentful toward her
ause she restricts their even-
S out to the weekend, know-
t keep up. with
f allowed to-go
hool night. How -
She convince the boys that
father wouldn’t approve
if he were at home all.
me and realized the prob-

School work i

.

for the poor
S she had to face the
alone with no one fo
and now and again.
edly this case could be
ed by the thousands
rs the number
‘ ave to be away
their families for the.
~~ St part of the time because
€ nature of their work.

I felt sorry

€n one conside
men who h

fishermen, seamen,
the Alcan project,
d so on, are all den- ' and discipline her family.—B.G.

_ Workers on
: Salesmen an

ied the pleasure of a natural
home life and in turn their
children can never know a com-
pletely normal existence and
will react in a number of dif- _
ferent ways., They may tend to
become too dependent upon the
mother, or, as in the case of
my neighbor, resentful of their
mother. Then again, if the
‘mother constantly uses
threat of what their! dad will do
to them when he gets home and
is told they have been misbe-

having, the youngsters will tend
to fear the father.

‘There is no fool-proof, methad
vof solving this problem; but
there are ways of easing it.
Encourage the, children to-take
_up some ‘hobby, perhaps join
a sports group or some com-
munity group. Make sure that
their friends are made welcome
-.in the home and get to know
them. The children should feel
_ that they can go to their mother
with any problem and know
they will get assistance.

What is needed in many cases
of course is a neighborhood
house or community centre
where other adults and parti-
cularly male supervisors could
help to a very great extent in
supervising the youngsters. In
some cases, a teacher at the.
school can ‘become a real friend
and advisor to the child and
a mother would ‘find it most
helpful. if she knew. that she
was not alone in trying to guide

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POPE CAN SAVE MILLIONS OF CHILDREN

Unborn baby:

the’.

the life of the mother.

It’s*not mothers who need to be —
reminded of human life sanctity

THE POPE recently returned
to his statement on mothers and

_ children. ;
He told an affecting story

about .“a young lady of noble
birth and nobler sentiments”
who ‘refused to “suppress the
life’ of her child to save her
own.

He quoted with approval this
‘mother’s words about her as yet
‘It has the right
to live.” © i

I am going to suggest that mil-
lions of babies have that right.

And I am going to ask if the
Pope will join others’ in fighting
for it. Z

But first let us be clear as to

what the Pope really did say in

his original address to the Italian

~midwives.

He was referring to cases of
obstructed labor.

He told the midwives that when
a baby could not be born alive
they must let-the mother die un-
delivered and the child with her.

The circumstances he had in
mind could not arise in Britain
or the Soviet Union because these
countries have ante-natal ser-

vices, maternity hospitals and ob-—

stetric surgery freely available to
all. ; Mea

Obstructed labor causes little
difficulty if the woman is in hos-
pital. A surgeon will perform the
operation known as Caesarian
section and oth mother and
child will be saved. 2

\ 5°3 x

CONDITIONS are very differ-
ent in Catholic countries. The
Pope. was ‘thinking of Italian,
Spanish and Irish women — of
the vast mass of Catholic peas-
ant women throughout the world.

He was thinking of the women
who have never heard of ante-
natal care, nor seen a maternity
hospital—and for whom obstetric
surgery just does not exist.

To these. women obstructed .

labor still spells tragedy, and
tragedy that is not a rarity but
@ commonplace. —

They go into labor in tiny
lamp-lit cottages without even

-Tunning water, and perhaps 50

miles or more from the nearest
hospital. After Jong hours of
.waiting, and longer hours of pain,
both mother and midwife realize
that labor is hopelessly obstruct-
ed. : :

‘In such circumstances the baby
is doomed. Nothing the midwife
can do will save it. It cannot
Mive unless it is born, but it can-
not be born alive. 4 i

The baby is doomed. But, in
the case\of the mother, the mid-
wife has alternatives.

She can save the mother. Or
she can do, nothing and watch
‘both mother and child die.

The Pope says she must do
nothing. But midwives, Catholic
or not, prefer to fight for life to
the end. They try to save the
only life which can be saved.

‘The baby has only minutes to
live at best Whether death
comes ‘five minutes earlier or
later makes little difference to

the baby. But those few minutes

make all the difference to the
mother. 5 : t
~ She may live another 50 years.
She ‘may have already half a
dozen young children whose lives
will be blighted by her loss. _

‘So the midwife kills the baby,
delivers it dead, and saves the
mother.
and lets both die.

The choice open to her is not
between the life of the baby or
eS

i

Or she does nothing—

between a dead mother and a
dead baby on the one hand, or

‘‘a live mother and a dead baby

on the other.

This’ was. the concrete situa-~

tion which faced mothers and

POPE PIUS XI
He can act to save millions of
children.

midwives everywhere up to the

latter part of 19th century when

Caesarian section .\became prac-
This is the situation which still

ticable.

faces them today in every coun-

try which fails to provide ade-

quate public maternity services.

x os bes ‘
THE PROBLEM is no longer a

’ medical problem but a _ social

problem. Few spectacles can be
more repulsive than that of
hearty bishops talking about the
child’s right to life in one breath
and, in the next, opposing public
maternity services—as they do,
for ‘instance, in Ireland.

To do the Catholic Church jus-
tice, she never interfered with
the midwives’ methods fn ‘ob-
structed delivery until modern
surgery made the sacrifice of the
child unnecessary.

All through the Middle Ages
theologians took the _ sensible
view that live delivery was a
matter of mechanics not of mor-
als. The first condemnation by
Rome of destructive methods was
issued in 1888.

Even then Rome did not flatly
condemn these methods as unlaw-
ful in practice to a doctor or mid-
wife confronted by a terrible dil-
emma She simply said that it-
could not be safely taught that
such practices were lawful.

At that time Caesarian section
was still in its infancy and pub-
lic maternity services were un-
known. The situation is different
now. Be
! Catholics all over the world
should use the Pope’s speech as a
weapon in the fight for ante-
natal clinics and maternity hos-
pitals freely available to all, not
as a matter of charity but of

right. j : f

THERE IS another question
which women of all religions
and parties would like answered.

If it is wrong for a midwife
to kill a dying baby to save its
mother’s life, why is it not-wrong
for men with guns and bombs
to kill thousands of babies in
order to impose the American
way of life’ on’ peasants “who
(very naturally) do not want it?

@ Does the Pope know what
napalm does to babies?

@ Does he know that the
atom bombs dropped on Japan
caused the abortion. of every
pregnant woman living within a
three- or four-mile radius—ex-
cept, of course, those who were’
killed?

@ If itis wrong for a woman —
to abort one baby to save her
life, why is it not also unlawful —
for a man to procure the abortion
of thousands of women—to kill
directly thousands of babies al-
ready safely born? ‘

It is not the mothers and mid-
wives who need to be reminded |

. of the sanctity of human life.

Let the Pope turn his mind to
the wholesale baby-killers. Let
him rebuke the atom-bomb ma- -
niacs and other warmongers.
it % bos

IN HIS Encyclical last Septem-
ber the Pope affirmed that the
wish dearest above all others to —
his heart, was the restoration of
unity (broken in 1054) between
Eastern and Western Christen-
dom .-

Pius XII has an opportunity of _
achieving that unity—if he acts. -
now; an opportunity such as none
of his predecessors ever had with-
in his grasp. '

The Moscow Patriarchate has
very close ties with the ancient
Patriarchates of Antioch and

_ Jerusalem, Alexandria and Con-

stantinople. They all.want peace. ~

Does Rome want peace? If
so, no firmer basis could be
found for the restoration of unity
between East and West.

Let him give a lead by calling
for a united front of Eastern and
Western Christendom against
wan :

Catholics who want to live and
want their children, born or un-
born to live, should pour in peti-
tions to Rome asking the Pone
to do this. ss

If Pius XII gave such a lead
the Eastern Patriarchates would
not be backward in responding.

Let him ban the bomb. Let
him call all bishops, East and
West, to a great council to dis- __
cuss the restoration of unity, and —
the preservation of Eastern and _
Western Christendom from the
great catastrophe which threat-
ens East and West alike.

\ - —CLAIRE MADDEN.

ZENITH CAFE
‘105 E. Hastings Street
VANCOUVER, B.C.

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PACIFIC TRIBUNE — JANUARY 11, 1952 — PAGE 11 _