Doctor at Brown Upheld in Giving Girls Birth Pills

The administration of Brown University yesterday supported Dr. Roswell G. Johnson, director of the university's health service, who prescribed contraceptive pills for two unmarried coeds.

Johnson earlier confirmed reports in the Brown Dally Herald and the Pembroke Record that he prescribed the pillz by his own "personal orientation"--not as a matter of university policy.

The student papers learned of Johnson's action after a reporter for the Record, posing as a Pembroke coed, asked Johnson for a prescription.

The university's President, Barnaby C. Keeney, said in a statement issued yesterday that he was satisfied with Johnson's "performance and judgment."

"After careful examination of the circumstances," Keeney said, "Dr. Johnson decided to prescribe contraceptive pills. It is common practice to do so well before marriage."

Scored for Talking

Keeney, however, criticized Johnson for "violating the confidence of medical consultations."

"The fact that a planted student reporter did violate this confidence does not relieve Dr. Johnson of his obligation," Keeney declared.

Keeney emphasized that Johnson's policy did not constitute a "blanket prescription." Johnson said that "several requests" had been denied and that he would not prescribe the pills to a girl under 21 unless she had written permission from, her parents.

Why?

"We want to know why they want to use the pills," he said. "I want to feel I'm contributing to a solid relationship and not contributing to unmitigated promiscuity."

The Herald praised Johnson's action as "intelligent and enlightened" and "practical and far-sighted". But the University's acting chaplain, the Rev. Jullus S. Scott Jr., said he felt the health service's action "patently documents the moral ambiguity of the university campus, the collapse of the tight ethical systems,...and the necessity for toughminded conversation about the nature of moral life in our times."