Birth Control: Consequences of Conception

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BIRTH CONTROL

South America's republics have the highest population growth rates in the world, far outstripping their economies' ability to feed the multiplying mouths.

Such pressure has built up in favor of birth control and abortion that last week the continent convened its first inter-American conference on population policies. Among many revealing statements, the most searingly candid came from Colombia's President Carlos Lleras Restrepo:

"I have visited the poorest slums of the republic and recommend the same visit to the people who examine the population problem above all from the moral point of view. What can we say of the frequent incest; of the primitive sexual experiences; of the miserable treatment of children; of the terrible proliferation of prostitution of children of both sexes; of frequent abortion; of almost animal union because of alcohol ic excesses?

"It is, in consequence, impossible for me to sit back and examine the mo rality or immorality of contraceptive practices without thinking at the same time of the immoral and frequently criminal conditions that the simple act of conception can produce in the course of time."