MPHA to Seek Professors' Aid On Birth Control

The Massachusetts Public Health Association has started a state wise campaign to win the support of college and university professors for the birth control bill currently before the Massachusetts Legislature.

The bill--No. 2965--would permit registered physicians to prescribe, and registered pharmacists to furnish, contraceptive drugs or articles. It would also permit public health and welfare organizations to give out birth control information. A similar bill was defented last August.

The MPHA campaign intends to print a petition supporting the bill in as many college and university newspapers in the state as will sell space to the organization. The petition contains testimonies from both medical and religious authorities--including Pichard Cardinal Cushing--which favor the revision of the old birth control laws. It urges all professors to send signed cards, indicating their support of revision to MPHA.

Edward J. Collins, a professor at Boston College and coordinator of MPHA's birth control activities, said yesterday that the passage of the bill would "depend on a strong public stand." The bill could pass, he said, "but if everybody sits on their hands, it will not."

When last year's bill was defeated, Collins said, MPHA interviewed the legislators who had voted against it. They found that most of the opposing votes were based on a fear of voter reaction, rather than outright disapproval of the bill.

This negative voter reaction is based, Collins asserted, on the mistaken idea that the bill is legislating a moral position on birth control. The bills' support contend, instead, that it leaves all voters free to come to their own decision. Collins hopes that widespread circulation of the MPHA petition will be able to combat this fear of voter disapproval in two ways. It will indicate considerable statewide support from an articulate and concerned group, and it will also spread information about the bill to the public