SALE OF CONTRACEPTIVES.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVIII, Issue 269, 12 November 1937, Page 6

SALE OF CONTRACEPTIVES.

In your issue of Wednesday there is a letter signed by H. Trevelyan King which calls for a reply. In the first place, the report iu the Wellington "Evening Post" is not a correct summary of my remarks. I cannot occupy the space required to deal with that report in detail. My position will, I hope, be clsar from the outset when I say that one of the principal objects of the organisation with which I am associated (I do not refer to the Plunket Society, but to the movement to deal with the abortion evil) is to secure that sales of contraceptives be limited to sales bv chemists' and doctors' clinics instead of being sold promiscuously. I imade no attack upon chemists. So far as any reference was made by me to the question of age limit, that reference was a perfectly general one, having in view the existing state of the law, which allows of the sale of contraceptives and female pills without regard to the age of the purchaser. What I had particularly in mind was the evil of the mail order system, and to this I expressly referred. I quite definitely deny that I used the words attributed to me, namely, that "contraceptives and abortifacients (could be bought at chemists' shops throughout the country even by quite young children." A reference to the report in the Wellington "Dominion" entirely bears me out in this. I am sorry that Mr. King did not communicate with me before writing to your paper. I did not question, nor do I now question, the propriety with which chemists as a whole conduct their business. I am endeavouring to combat an evil which is intensely dangerous to our community, and in that endeavour I desire the support, not the antagonism, of the chemists of New Zealand. SIMOXE NATHAN.