One of the biggest problems faced by Planned Parenthood is that since their abortion counseling programs were announced, private doctors have started referring patients there at an increasing rate.

Many professionals cannot understand why doctors, now that abortion is legal, cannot handle the counseling and referral of their own patients, as they do with other medical problems.

However, it appears that even doctors who are not against abortion are reticent to become involved in the abortion issue, and refer their patients to other agencies.

Planned Parenthood officials feel the problem of abortion counseling is a community one, and hope to try to form a coalition of agencies doing counseling to set up a central information and referral system.

Mrs. Harris says the Medical Advisory Committee of the agency will meet, and she hopes they approach the Academy of Medicine to ask for help in working out the problems.

Mrs. Harris also said the agency would try to find funds to hire additional counseling staff-they now have two people working 60 hours total per weekand would try to work with all community groups interested in the problem.

[From the Feminists for Life, Jan. 14, 1974]

THE ABORTION KICKBACKS

(By Roger Rapoport)

Not all Los Angeles hospitals have to pay $50 to $100 to acquire patients. At least two prime suppliers of patients, the Rev. J. Hugh Anwyl-who used to be in the business of saving souls before he got into selling bodies-and Dr. Morton Barke firmly believe in volume discounts. During 1971 andn 1972 they sent 7,706 abortion cases to suburban Montclair Hospital at a mere $20 a head. The deal between the doctor and the reverend began in 1970. Anwyl, a former minister of the Mt. Hollywood Congregational Church, was then director of Clergy Counseling Service for Problem Pregnancies, and he also processed abortion referrals for Planned Parenthood/Los Angeles. When Anwyl met Dr. Barke, the reverend immediately began referring abortion cases to the gynecologist's personally owned West Coast Medical Group. Then Dr. Barke helped set up National Abortion Council to get still more patients. NAC did little more than take calls from abortion patients who were responding to NAC ads-and referred the callers to Dr. Barke.

The Clergy Counseling Service and National Abortion Council referrals made Barke's West Coast Medical Group flourish. In the summer of 1971, Dr. Barke went to A.R. Markey, chairman of Century Medical Inc., which owned Montclair Hospital. Why not turn the money-losing, 34-bed facility into an abortion hospital? Barke promised to supply Montclair with 2,000 patients a month if Markey would pay $20 a head to National Abortion Council. Markey agreed and Barke began shipping in patients. But not enough. He fell short of his guarantee. So he went to Anwyl, who came up with a new source of patients. In the fall of 1971 Anwyl merged Clergy Counseling Service with Planned Parenthood/ Los Angeles and directed abortion referral work for both organizations. Since federally funded Planned Parenthood is the country's largest family planning agency, with over 700 clinics nationwide, it was easy for the Rev. Anwyl to persuade affiliates in states where abortions were illgal to refer patients to his friend, Barke, for abortions at Montclair.

By November, 1971 Barke's West Coast Medical Group had expanded to a staff or eight doctors, two nurses and 20 clerical workers. Thanks to Anwyl, patients were flying in from all over. They were picked up one by one of the air-conditioned, 12-passenger vans from Barke's group, whisked to Montclair for quick abortions and returned to the airport within hours. Montclair paid $20 to Planned Parenthood/Los Angeles or NAC for each patient, regardless of whether she paid cash or was covered by the California version of Medicaid, Medi-Cal. The kickbacks were made under the guise of payments for psychological testing and evaluation, which consisted of the following at NAC: just prior to their abortions, National Abortion Council patients filled out a onepage questionnaire. These forms were taken to the NAC office where a clerk rubber stamped them with a psychologist's name.

Montclair also kicked back $20 per patient to Planned Parenthood/Los Angeles for "psychological testing and evaluation." According to sources who were with West Coast Medical Group at the time, there is no evidence that the "psychological testing and evaluation" was actually provided to these patients by Planned Parenthood. Moreover, Planned Parenthood/Los Angeles operates under a federal grant channelled to it through the Los Angeles Regional Family Planning Council, and this grant provides money for "counseling." Under the terms of the grant, Planned Parenthood/Los Angeles is prohibited from receiving any second pyament for counseling services to abortion patients. But between November 3, 1971 and March 28, 1972, it received from Montclair $52,940 for "psychological testing and evaluation" of 2,647 abortion patients.

According to the Rev. Anwyl-who became executive director of Planned Parenthood/Los Angeles in 1972-the organization's '71 and '72 financial reports do not show any hospital income for psychological testing and evaluation or any other direct services charged to abortion patients. "We never accept any payments of any kind on abortion referrals," the Rev. Anwyl says. "It's unethical. We don't allow it because it might influence where we send our patients. We want to be free to snd our patients to the best possible hospital." The fact is that I have copies of 20 checks that were sent from Montclair to Planned Parenthood/Los Angeles in payment for "psychological testing and evaluation." The first four of these checks were sent directly to Planned Parenthood. But Dr. Barke wanted to be sure that Planned Parenthood was not getting paid off for any of his NAC patients, so he asked Century Medical Inc., the owner of Montclair Hospital, to send further checks to him for forwarding. On December 14, 1971 Century issued a check for $2,220 made out to Planned Parenthood-West Coast Med. Group, Inc. It was mailed to the West Coast Medical Group office and marked "personal and confidential," attention of Dr. Morton Barke. The next eight checks were also sent to Dr. Barke who, after examining them, had them delivered to the Rev. Anwyl. This procedure upset Anwyl, so Century tried to strike a compromise by sending the final seven payments-which were still marked to the attention of Dr. Barke-directly to

Planned Parenthood.

Planned Parenthood/Los Angeles was violating the terms of its federal grant in two ways. First, it was receiving a second payment for "psychological testing and evaluation" of abortion patients, not permissible under the terms of its grant. Second, it was failing to report this income to the federal government. Both these violations could result in termination of the government funding. More important, if there was appropriation of unreported revenue by an executive of a federally funded organization, this could lead to felony prosecution. As for Dr. Barke, his funneling of checks to Planned Parenthood could run afoul of the California Business and Professional Code, which prohibits physicians from directing money to sources of patients. Also, any direct or indirect financing of National Abortion Council by Dr. Barke would be a violation of the California Business and Professional Code.

In 1972, Dr. Barke and the Rev. Anwyl became dissatisfied with the $20-apatient fee at Montclair. Barke tried to talk Century chairman A.R. Markey into selling him Montclair Hospital, with Anwyl sitting in on some of the negotiations. When that deal did not go through, Barke and Anwyl tried to boost Montclair's kickback by $5 per patient. Markey balked, and the abortion patient suppliers pulled out of Montclair in the spring of '72.

After withdrawing from Montclair, they directed their patients to Bel Air for a time. Then, Barke became an owner of Inglewood Hospital, which immediately began receiving the majority of Planned Parenthood's cases, then approaching 1,000 a month. The National Abortion Council changed its name to the National Family Planning Council and began offering a full range of patient services, but the vast majority of its abortion cases ended up at Barke's Inglewood Hospital.

[From the Medical World News, Nov. 9, 1973]

ABORTION IN JAPAN AFTER 25 YEARS

Rising literally from the ashes of World War II, Japan has produced the economic miracle of the 20th century. To help make that miracle possible in its hungary overcrowded islands, the Diet passed a liberal abortion law in 1948 as a means of holding the population down.

But on the 25th anniversary of that law, a saddened Japanese physician told colleagues from nearly 50 nations that his country's abortion policy has had some unfortunate consequences: Abortion is replacing contraception, and Japan has too few young people to care for the growing proportion of its population over 65.

"Abortion has become a way of life," Prof. T.S. Ueno of Tokyo's Nihon University told the Ninth Congress of the International Academy of Legal and Social Medicine, in Rome. "Moral life has become disorderly. It is an age of free sex, and the life of the unborn is not respected. We can now say the law is a bad one."

Japanese physicians, Dr. Ueno said, can receive a "designation" to perform abortions after a two-year "apprenticeship." A doctor having this designation may operate if in his judgment "the mother's health may be affected seriously by continuation of pregnancy or delivery, from the physical or economic viewpoint."

A year after the "Eugenic Protection Law" was passed, 250,000 legal abortions were done, Dr. Ueno reports; last year no fewer than 1.5 million were done.

"Abortion has become a substitute for contraception," he says. "About half the Japanese women who have abortions admit that they did not even try to prevent conception. Induced abortion has become so common it is almost compulsory for many women; they feel it is a part of life in Japan that can't be helped. Some apartment house managers enforce a policy that no family in the building may have more than two children. Pregnant mothers are often asked by their gynecologists whether or not they intend to carry the child to term. The entire economy has hardened around the two-child family."

Many Japanese are ashamed of having abortions, he suggested. Public opinion surveys suggest that most Japanese women do not approve of abortion even though they practice it. Only 18% of women surveyed said that they "did not feel anything in particular" after their first abortion, 35% "felt sorry about the unborn child," and 28% felt they had "done something wrong," Dr. Ueno told the congress.

"Induced abortions are a source of easy income for doctors," he charged. "Cash is paid, so they don't have to be paid through health insurance; many find abortion to be a convenient source of side income."

He also charged that legal abortions are "not remarkably safer" than illegal ones. He believes that the sudden change from pregnancy causes an imbalance of the sympathetic nervous system and has many other ill effects. Among them: dysmenorrhea, sterility, habitual spontaneous abortion, extrauterine pregnancies, cramps, headache, vertigo, exhaustion, sleeplessness, lumbago, neuralgia, debility and psychosomatic illness, perforation of the uterus, cervical lesions, infections, bleeding, and retention of some tissue.

Another consequence of 25 years of abortion, according to Dr. Ueno: Japan has 14 million people over 65 among its population of 108 million. In the next 20 years the over-65 population is expected to reach 29 million, of a total of 130 million Japanese. Because this means too many old people for the young to support, he predicts strong pressure for euthanasia.

"Easy abortion has been a bad experience for us," he told MWN. "It is now very difficult to control or to eradicate, despite growing criticism. It has became a way of life; the law might be changed but the practice cannot be controlled.

"The sooner Japan returns to a solid law which forbids the taking of the life of the unborn, the better for our nation. Just as we need guard rails, signal lights, and speed limits, so we need precise laws governing abortion. We need such laws to save us from our individual and collective weakness," he concluded.

[From the Uncertified Human]

EUTHANASIAS THE LATEST THREAT IS ON THE RISE

A year and a half ago two things used to be said: that the euthanasia movement would take ten years to materialize and that perhaps it never would. The first prediction is coming true eight years too early and the second statement is being made considerably less often.

PROPAGANDA BEGINNING

In the January 14, 1972 issue of Life Magazine, an article appeared outlining the dilemma of the mother of a 1-year old mongoloid child "still unwanted and unnamed" who cost her parents much time and expense in treatments and care. He mother is quoted as saying: "Why, when there are too many people in the world, keep alive an unwanted, malformed child. I still say if there was a place where I could take this child and she would be put to sleep permanently, I would do it." The story is a very sad one. It follows two articles on men who personally decided to discontinue agonizing treatments for terminal diseases and so die in peace. Yet strangly, the story of the mongoloid girl was also headed, "The Right to Die". Now really, the woman was campaigning for the girl's death, not her own. She admitted in a subsequent letter her intention to get a bill passed permitting her to put the child to sleep. Wouldn't "right to kill" be more appropriate?

The Executive director of the fastgrowing Euthanasia Educational Fund centered in New York State informed the editor in a recent personal letter that

Your letter is very perceptive about the other questions which arise and many of our members as individuals do believe in making a means of dying available, in providing for those who cannot speak for themselves and in the humane withdrawal of support from defective babies. However, all of these are illegal and as an organization we do not advocate any of them.

If "providing for those who cannot speak for themselves" were legal, what provisions might they advocate?

PUBLIC SUPPORT FOR MERCY KILLING

A Gallup Poll published in the Toronto Star for Sept. 27, 1972, indicated that the majority of people in Canada seem to favour mercy-killing at the patient's request. Yet, on the opposite page, there was a much-featured article by the United Church's former moderator (for our American readers, the United Church of Canada is one of the bastions of lethal liberalism in this country) concluding that the only reason we do not similarly end the lives of those who have not requested it but whose existences have become meaningless is "selfish indifference". It seems that the idea of killing at the patient's request and killing without it when we feel justified are difficult to separate. People are becoming particularly vocal on the question of deformed or defective children, who are generally considered, as such, to be unwanted. Dr. Colin Ferguson, president elect of the Canadian Paediatrics Society, addressed the annual meeting, called for life-and-death guidelines for mongoloid children. (Toronto Star, July 16, 1972) He said, "It is a supreme penalty to put on some families to save the life of a mongolian idiot." He noted that a young mother could have other normal children if the defective baby were phased out and the total happiness would be easier for all concerned if socially acceptable guidelines were available", he concluded. Dr. Ferguson mentioned that another type of child also merited infanticidal consideration, those afflicted with myelomeningoceles, results in leg paralysis and lack of bowel control. He cited a Dr. David Morley of Britain who claims that such children cost the state one million dollars per year. Interestingly, on August 8, 1972 a surgeon at London's Hospital for Sick Children told the London Sun that these children should be left to die. He believes that a more selective approach is needed with respect to survival of the handicapped. Of course, selectivity can pose problems too. A controversy arose recently among anaestheticians, reported in Ob Gyn News, January 1, 1971, No. 1, p. 1 as to whether an anaesthetician should attempt to revive an infant he had accidentally anaesthetized during the birth process, insofar as that infant might be mentally retarded. One doctor objected to allowing the infant to die on the grounds that, without prior knowledge of the actual IQ potential of the infant, one could not gauge how much below normal it would be if at all.

There is a good deal of confusion about the meaning of the term "euthanasia". To some, it means allowing a person to die who wants to, and to others it means putting a person to sleep. It has been used to mean withdrawal of support without the patient's consent or putting the patient to sleep without his or her consent.

THE "HONOURABLE" MAN

Chaplain Reeves at Columbia University remarks that the dilemma in his view is basically this: there are two supreme challenges facing us all: to find an honourable equivalent to Spartan exposure on the rocks at the beginning of life and an honourable equivalent to the Eskimo hole in the ice at the end of life. (Not. Observer, Mar. 4, '72) One wanders in passing just what it is that the Reverend Reeves finds to be less than "honourable" about the Eskimo way if the end results are the same. It is the primitive methods he objects to? Are antiseptic hypodermics more "honourable" than the ice?

LIKE THE ABORTION CAMPAIGNS

All this bears a profund resemblance to many a successful abortion campaign, a fact which may disturb those who "fear that this sort of thing may get out of hand". Indeed it may-in fact it already is, out of hand. Let us elaborate. In the article in Life, the emotionally wrenching plea for a very hard case is reminiscent of the earlier pleas for abortion. "The mother whose child will almost certainly be born deformed" drew a great deal of sympathy for the "right to abortion". The mother whose child is born deformed is beginning to draw sympathy for infanticide. It does not really matter how you define infanticide; whether it involves "withdrawal of support" or drowning the child in a bucket is immaterial: If you want the child to die and you make that child die-that is infanticide.

On March 5 of this year Time Magazine reported on an even clearer case from the Netherlands, this time it was senile euthanasia. The case was very bad indeed, as the old mother was quite sick. Her doctor daughter put her to sleep without her consent, and then because she was a "woman of principle" informed the nursing home director. The police were described as failing "to act against the popular doctor" and, prevailed upon, the public prosecutor charged her "reluctantly". Thus the stage is set: a hard case (hasn't anyone heard the principle that hard cases make bad laws?) a doctor of remorselessly high ethical principles, a popular doctor at that, and a judicial group which unwittingly makes a verdict out of its obvious unwillingness to act. By the time the case goes to trial it is a public issue and everything about the actual case except its emotional aura is forgotten. For one thing, someone started a foundation for voluntary euthanasia, either forgetting or not caring that this case was about involuntary euthanasia. A group of doctors signed an open letter to the Minister of Justice accusing themselves of the same crime. This is very similar to the "abortion forums" where doctors admit to performing illegal abortions. The fact that the government was unwilling to bring Dr. Postma to trial gave safety in numbers to other physicians and it soon began to be supposed that whatever a number of physicians do must be morally right. In other words, as soon as the government admitted that the hardness of the case made them reluctant to try Dr. Postma on the principle, they found themselves having to accept the principle itself. The euthanasia foundation acquired 3,000 members in a week. The petition in support of (presumably involuntary) euthanasia that was circulated in Dr. Postma's town got two thousand signatures. The Minister of Justice pointed out the difference between active and passive euthanasia, admitting that the latter is widely and justifiably used in hopeless cases. Then he illustrated a common confusion in thinking by asking rhetorically, where would active euthanasia lead? This allowed many people to get the idea that mercy-killing would be all right as a principle so long as it did not overstep some mythical boundary of propriety, to be defined by the Minister of Justice perhaps, or whoever else feels qualified. No wonder then, that so many euthanasia lobbies flourished in the utter confusion of the case.

AN EASY EXCUSE

Dr. Postma pointed out that her mother's suffering was not "unbearable", and said, "Her physical suffering was serious, no more. But the mental suffering became unbearable." For some reason, euthanasia advocates, like abortion advocates, always fall back on "mental suffering". Because it admits of no particular definition or alleviation, as physical suffering does, it makes a much easier excuse to plead at an emotional trial. Dr. Postma said that the mental suffering "was most important to me. Now, after all these months, I am convinced I should have done it much sooner." Should she have done it before her mother