JUVENILE. MORAL INQUIRY

Press, Volume XC, Issue 27502, 9 November 1954, Page 3

JUVENILE. MORAL INQUIRY

BAPTISTS COMMEND GOVERNMENT

COMPLAINT ABOUT SALES OF CONTRACEPTIVES

(New Zealand Press Association) AUCKLAND, November 7.

The assembly of the New Zealand Baptist Union is to commend the Government for its appointment of the special committee on moral delinquency, and for its prompt legislative and administrative action on some issues raised in the committee’s report. A resolution on these lines was passed at the assembly in the Auckland Tabernacle on Saturday. In a further resolution, the assembly urged the Government to take whatever action might be necessary to prevent the sale or disposal of contraceptives to children and adolescents. The motion was passed unanimously. “The special committee reported that adolescents should not buy or have contraceptives in their possession,” said the Rev. J. E. Simpson, of Napier. “However difficult it may be to control the sale or distribution of them, the problem must be handled if a growing evil is not to become still worse.”

The question was a grave one, Mr Simpson said, and a problem that was most difficult to control. The sale of contraceptives was an open invitation for adolescents to become immoral. Chemists, he said, were not the only business people from whom young people could obtain contraceptives. He knew of instances where they had been sold in milk -bars and garages. “This sort of thing leads speedily to the deterioration of the morality of our young people,” said Mr Simpson.