Religion: Birth Control's Week

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¶In Colorado Springs, at their 14th national biennial convention last week, the Young Women's Christian Associations reiterated their stand on birth control, unanimously voting to "put sex bootleggers out of business" by supporting legislation to permit dissemination by doctors of contraceptive information.

¶In the Catholic Holy Name Society's Holy Name Journal appeared a blast at Mrs. Thomas Norvel Hepburn, birth control advocate and mother of Cinemactress Katharine Hepburn. What provoked this sheet to impolite language was Mrs. Hepburn's recent statement that "birth control makes it possible for young people to get married and save up and have children when they really want them. ... It makes parentage a glorious fulfillment of their hopes instead of an accident of Nature."

¶In Manhattan, home from a world tour, arrived the nation's No. 1 birth controller, Mrs. Margaret Sanger, with much to say to the Press. In India, Mrs. Sanger said she obtained indorsements from 45 medical associations, founded 50 birth control centres, spoke at 100-odd meetings and "found no opposition in India from any religious group. . . . Everybody accepted the idea that something must be done to halt the increase in population and the inevitable death of women and children."

Mrs. Sanger spent three days with that half-forgotten little holy man, the Mahatma Gandhi.* He, said she, believes "that women should control the whole question of family—how many children and when. He went me one better on that score: I believe that men should say how many children and the women should say when. After all, the fathers have to support the children." But Mrs. Sanger did not bring away St. Gandhi's complete indorsement of her work. Explained she: "He just didn't know much about the subject."

¶In Columbus, Ohio, the 32nd quadrennial conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church toyed gingerly with birth control. Placed before the 600-odd Methodist delegates was a memorial supported by Mrs. Sanger's National Committee on Federal Legislation for Birth Control and signed by three Methodist educators, one Manhattan minister, numerous church board members and trustees of the Women's Home Missionary Society. The memorial cited "indorsements"' of birth control by Methodist regional conferences, by other Protestant and Jewish bodies. It urged that Methodism, indorse "the principles of birth control legislation now pending in Congress." Sent to a committee the resolution quickly struck a snag. A subcommittee found it was "artfully drawn" in that "indorsement" was a misleading word for some birth control pronouncements mentioned in it. After killing this memorial the subcommittee set to work to draft its own views.

Other Methodist work done last week: