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practitioner attached to, or recommended by, the Centre, or to a
suitable hospital or clinic where her condition can receive adequate
treatment. The objects of the Centre are instruction, education
and supervision of the mother in the nurture of her child; it is
not a dispensary or a clinic for the treatment of disease for mother
or child, and is not equipped for such duties.
5. On general grounds it is clear that organised instruction
in contraceptive methods is alien to the purpose of a Maternity
and Child Welfare Centre established by a Local Authority for
nursing and expectant mothers, would militate against the objects
of its establishment, and might well be distasteful to its clients.
Such Centres are maintained out of rates and taxes paid by all
sections of the community, and therefore they should not be used
for any purpose to which certain sections of the community
might reasonably object. Moreover, the staffing and furnishing
of these Centres is not such as provides equipment or makes the
necessary provision for the systematic teaching, demonstration
and supervision of artificial contraceptive methods, still less for
the regular practice of such methods or the consequent followingup
of any untoward results. These are some of the reasons
which have led the Ministry of Health to discourage any close
association between organised artificial contraception and the
Maternity and Ante-natal Centres established under the Maternity
and Child Welfare Act of 1918.
6. There is no general statutory power enabling a Local
Authority to establish birth-control clinics as such. Indeed, it is
doubtful if there is, at present, a sufficient degree of unanimity in
the medical profession or in public opinion as to contraceptive
methods to justify a Local Authority in undertaking the responsibility
of establishing out of the local rate a special centre for
systematic instruction in artificial contraception and its application,
as a definite part of their preventive duties. Experience
shows, however, that a "birth control" clinic is naturally attended
by many women who are in need of the medical or surgical treatment
of disease or discomfort, and such treatment cannot always
be provided either at a Maternity and Child Welfare Centre or at
a "birth control" clinic as such. Possibly there is a place in a
national health service for a different kind of institution which
would serve as a Mothers' Centre or Outpatient Gvnaecological
Clinic, where mothers needing advice on physical and health
matters, both of nature and nurture, might well be assisted. Such
an institution under adequate and skilled medical supervision could
receive minor gynaecological cases, deal with some forms of postnatal
after-care, accept responsibility for counselling mothers of
subnormal physique or mentality, give advice on the practice of
contraceptive methods when medically needed, and act as a clearing
house for appropriate treatment of one sort or another bv
hospital or medical practitioner.
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