SEXUAL TRUTH AND CONSEQUENCES

An overly strident title for this conscientious, careful argument for a sane approach to sex education, contraception, and abortion as they relate to individual freedom, safety, and health. The thrust of this plea-cum-medical guide is toward social action: each chapter begins with appropriate testimony (Margaret Sanger; Timothy Black; three anonymous victims of shabby practices) and ends with suggestions as to what concerned readers can do in their communities through the courts, schools, medical institutions, and neighborhood centers. The emphasis is on the need for dispassionate information available to all who seek it. There is of course a bias here toward abortion and birth control as a right (and an imperative in a larger context), to curb population, to stimulate a better life in overcrowded America, and to stabilize society by producing only wanted children. The section concerning sex education in the schools is weaker since the authors have not succeeded in dispelling the doubts that objective courses in public school sex education are possible or feasible on any scale. In the chapters on contraception, sterilization, and abortion, the authors give the essential pros and cons dearly and offer a round up of national legal trends. With appendices containing abortion laws for each state and a list of agencies concerned.