The Display of Contraceptives A Bill designed to place some
restriction on the sale of contraceptives will, it may be hoped, be given a second reading by the House of Commons this week. What the Bill does and does not aim at should be clearly understood. Birth- control is now widely practised and, outside the Roman Catholic Church, not widely disapproved. This Bill at any rate has no concern of any kind with relations between married people. What it does propose is to place some restriction on the flamboyant display of birth-control appliances objectionably familiar in certain quarters of most great cities, the sale of such appliances through slot-machines, or their hawking in the streets, and sale to unmarried persons under eighteen. Married, or for that matter unmarried, persons have no difficulty today- in obtaining approved birth- control appliances from any reputable chemist, and that is the right place to go for them. Displayed and sold as they are today by establishments which specialise in sex literature, aphrodisiacs and abortifacients, they become largely an aid, and to some extent an incitement, to promiscuity.
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