Opposition from Archbishop Paul J. Hallinan and a leader of the Jewish community has apparently killed a medical treatment “consent” bill which they said could open the door to sterilization and abortion, but the Georgia House has passed another bill liberalizing abortion laws by a 129-3 vote.

The archbishop had already opposed both bills in an editorial in last week’s Georgia Bulletin.

He and M.C. Gettinger, executive director of the Atlanta Jewish Community opposed the medical “consent” bill at a hearing of the House Judiciary Committee last Thursday-one day after the House passed the other bill.

After the hearing, Rep. Robin Harris of DeKalb County, chairman of the Judiciary Committee, said it was his opinion that the committee will not report on the “consent” bill.

“Our legislators have previously rejected other bills because they are rooted in a scale of values, a way of life, completely foreign to American law as well as the Judaeo-Christian moral code,” Archbishop Hallinan said in his statement.

“Such a way of life is materialistic, that man lives by bread alone, that there is not worth or human dignity in a defective person, no value in the sacrifices we make to care for the incompetent,” the archbishop said.

“You are judging the merits and demerits of a bill which in various forms has come before you in previous sessions. It has failed before because a majority of our legislators, like a majority of our citizens, do not want a law which is an invasion of God’s dominion since no state or individual, even an ordinary or a physician, has the right to mutilate a person, who is innocent of any crime, uncharged by a prosecutor, and unconvicted by a court,” Archbishop Hallinan commented.

Gettinger said his council, which is composed of 49 affiliated organizations, virtually all the Jewish religious, cultural, social welfare and philanthropic groups in Atlanta, vigorously opposes the bill—House Bill 244.

Gettinger said he and the archbishop appeared before a Senate committee in 1965 to oppose a voluntary sterilization act. “We oppose this bill not merely for religious reasons but because of its scope and its availability for evil and mischief.”

He said in 1966, House Bill 60 was introduced and passed to authorize sterilization of certain individuals and setting for the conditions under which sterilization will be authorized. “We (the council) did not oppose the bill because we felt it clearly specified its objectives and established appropriate safeguards.

“With respect to the current House Bill 244 now before the Legislature, we feel that it includes a number of provisions and lacks clarity in its application so that it contains the same potential for abuse which we found dangerous in the 1965 bill on sterilization.”

Gettinger said although the world sterilization is not used in the bill, the reference to surgical or medical treatment presumably refers to an act of sterilization or abortion and its attendant implications. He said another section in effect subjects any individual to surgical treatment against his wishes. Another section states that consent is unnecessary “where an emergency exists.”

Glenn Hogan, executive secretary of the Georgia Hospital Association, said the sate needs a consent bill because of a mobile population. He said the bill could be written to exclude sterilization and abortion.

An Atlanta attorney, Trammell Vickery, who advises hospitals on legal matters, said the whole purpose of the bill was to try to consolidate laws on consent for minors and incompetents.

“To see it labeled in the press as a sterilization or abortion bill was a shock,” he said. Vickery said the bill is not intended for sterilization or abortion.

Rep. Elliot Levitas, a member of the judiciary committee, said, “What concerns me about the bill is, I think a man has a right to decide whether he wants to undergo surgery.”

Rep. Willis Richardson who introduced the bill said as far as he knew the bill “hasn’t got the first thing to do with either sterilization or abortions.”

Rep. Mike Egan said, “It says ‘surgical or medical treatment’ doesn’t it? The way I read the bill it legalizes operations on people whether they are willing or not—and doesn’t say what kind of operations.

Father Noel C. Burtensahw, chancellor, said opponents felt the bill—whatever the intention of its opponents—could be used by some to perform sterilization and abortion operations. He said the legislation was too broad.

Another opponent, Tony Zivalich said, “Our executive board of the Teamsters’ Union will ask our rank and file membership to protest the bill vehemently, and we’re surprised that there hasn’t been more publicity on the bill.”

The bill which passed the House says that a licensed physician, with the consent and approval of two other physicians, may perform an abortion if it is apparent that prolongation of pregnancy will result in serious physical or mental damage to the mother or the unborn child.

Rep. Richard Starnes of Rome, sponsor of the bill, said that recent discoveries that German measles in an expectant mother can result in the birth of a deformed child and the “thalidomide tragedies” point to the need for a legal method of terminating dangerous pregnancies.