The Boston Globe from Boston, Massachusetts • 116

Boston Sunday Globe November 9, 1969 SJ BIRTH CONTROL 18 A Bill Baird's lonely crusade v7 I 7 ''j 1 ,77777 sewn. a ham of birth control, he spreads his word with evangelical fervor. In ghettos, on college campuses and in street demonstrations, he hammers home his simple theme: that all women have a right to learn how to prevent conception and similarly, that they have a right to abort an unwanted child. Inevitably, these views lead to conflict with existing laws and the conflict is no-where more apparant than in Massachusetts, which like most states has a law against abortion, but unlike most, has a law that says only married people may have access to birth control devices. Only Massachusetts and Wisconsin have this "married persons" 21, 18 or 16 on when birth control aids may be provided.

Ironically, Baird came to Massachusetts to test the law shortly after the Legislature had voted its first reform of birth control statutes in its history. The law was first passed in 1847 and it was strengthened in 1905. A state referendum upheld the law in 1948. It was not until 1965 that the prospect for reform became bright. By ROBERT L.

LEVEY Glob SUB Bill Baird had finished his birth control lecture at Boston University and was talking with some students. Then he got his charts and displays together! and was about to leave when a young woman approached and asked if he could speak with her for a minute. Baird didn't have to ask what was on her mind. When a girl tells him she has a problem, it is always the same thing. She was pregnant.

He told her to visit him "at his office in Brighton where they could discuss the situation and he could give her advice. often Baird's advice is that a girl should seek out a safe abortion. By his own estimate, his Parents' Aid Society has made this recommendation to about 3000 women. He has also told women where they could have an abortion performed, both inside and outside the country, arid what it is likely to cost. This service, offered without charge, represents the crisis side of Baird's crusade.

other efforts involve getting out the message. Like a sort of Billy Gra BILL BAIRD With about 100,000 unwanted pregnan birth control and exhibit birth control devices, he was still prohibited by the current law from dispensing birth control items. That decision is now under appeal to the Federal courts. Baird contends that the state has no business making laws in the areas of birth control and abortion. They are matters of personal conscience, he insists, not subject to legal prohibition.

His arguments for liberalization are based quite dramatically on his grow-ing experiencewith women who have become pregnant and in turn, desperate. Baird has spent hours on phones talking with women threatening suicide. He has been visited by women who tried to abort themselves and instead succeeded only in injuring themselves. As he goes through his mail, the same story crops up again and again. Young girl, poor, black, writes to ask where she can go to get help.

She is three months pregnant and her parents feel she has shamed them. She has no money. Sometimes Baird has been able to send girls to doctors who would per-' form an abortion free. Usually they have to pay. The going rate is about If you are well off or come from a wealthy family that is supporting the abortion search, it could run to $1000 or $1500.

Baird claims to know about 100 "legitimate" abortionists in the country. These are practicing doctors who believe that, someone has to respond to the giant call for abortions, so they devote a good part of their regular practices to providing these services. But there are hundreds or even thousands more who fit the "quack" category. Unlicensed and often unskilled, they perfom the bulk of the illegal abortions, widely estimated to run as high as one million, and they are the people responsible for most of the estimated 4000 deaths each year attributed to these operations. Baird thinks it would be That year, an effort to amend the law failed by the fairly narrow margin of 119-97, amid charges from opponents that such a change would be.

tantamount to bringing about the fall of the state and nation. It should be emphasized that the original law placed a total ban on the dispensing of information or devices by anyone for the purpose of either caus-ing miscarriage or preventing pregnancy. This, of course, placed even doctors and druggists in direct conflict with a law that would place them behind bars if it were enforced. Tht prescription and sale of birth control pills amounted to an illegal act by both doctor and pharmacist. The way the state resolved this situation was by ignoring it.

The law was virtually nev-ver enforced. In 1966, birth control advocates won a partial victory. The law was amended to allow doctors and registered clinics to counsel married persons and the sale of birth control drugs and articles, on prescription, became legal for the first time. The amendment also continued the ban on advertising such items and specifically prevented their sale in vending machines. In his lectures, Baird continually points out the irony that without a prescription, birth control foam can be bought in any large discount house or department store, He challenges law enforcement authorities to arrest the owners of these stores.

He adds, also, that the state collects sales tax on these illegal purchases. This was the law that Baird tested at a lecture at Boston University in April, 1967. He asked that the law be enforced, held up a birth control pill and distributed a can of birth control foam. The state complied and he was arrested. He was found guilty and sentenced to three months in jail.

In May, the state Supreme Court ruled that while Baird, under the constitutional protection of the free speech amendment, could lecture on y. yr' K' I 7 '7! (C better to allow women to seek safe, inexpensive abortions than to force them into the hands of the "quacks." "When you talk to the women." he said, "yu realize that all the arguments by the politicians are academic." But opponents of reform of birth control and abortion laws feel there are several legitimate grounds for opposition. The conflicts line up about this way: Catholics view birth control practices of any artificial sort to be in conflict with church teaching. Abortion, to the Catholic view, is murder, since the person is presumed to exist at the moment of conception. But though Catholic Church officials always opposed reform of birth control laws here, they relented in 1965 and said that non-Catholics had the right to this advice.

The decision of Richard Cardinal Cushing to abandon opposition to birth control legislation in 1965 is widely regarded as being the most critical factor in gaining passage of the amended law, though it His hypothesis is supported by a number of un-systematically noted occurrences. For instance, light may be the mechanism for triggering the onset of puberty, a suggestion made when it was observed that blind girls menstruate at an earlier age than sighted girls. The theory is that, since the pituitary of the con-genitally blind girl does not receive the continuous barrage of nerve signals from her retina, some other bodily mechanism imperfectly compensates for the absence of a normal I BAIRD DISPLAYS a birth control device during lecture I at Northeastern University in September, 1969. Eyes are a took another year to win the fight. On abortion, of course, the Catholic Church still holds to its moral position and would not be expected to change.

There is also the matter of sexual morality. Many opponents of birth control reform argue that the inevitable result of reforming the law would be an increase in promiscuity. If sexual activity among the unmarried is viewed as a sin, as it is by many, people should not be placed in a position where thy are more likely to engage in it, they argue. Proponents of change deal in reality rather than morality. They say that early sexual relations and unmarried pregnancies are and always will be part of, life.

It is better to face this fact and try to minimize the problems it creates than to ignbre it, they say. But many of those who have tried to' change the law have begun to run out of patience. Rep Martin Linsky (R-Brookline) has filed a bill in each of the past two years trying to extend the birth control provisions to unmarried persons. In 1968, his effort triggering mechanism. Doctors have also noted that when pituitary function is suppressed, a degenerative disease known as diabetic retinopathy undergoes remission.

This suggests' an interaction, and perhaps a direct con-n i 0 between the glands that produce neuro-homones and the normal functioning of the eye. The observation that the pituitary is. intimately linked to eye disease may ultimately provide "researchers with a lever with which to pry open the secret of diabetes what gives rise to it, how to cure 7" 7 New retena research may unlock secrets of the brain was slammed down by the Housa on a 178-49 vote. Last year he gained a little ground but still lost 161-68. He doesn't plan to try again next year.

No assault on the state abortion law has ever made serious headway. That provision, Chapter 272, Section 19, of the General Laws, makes abortion illegal under any conditions and provides prison sentences 5-20 years if a patient dies during an operation and the abortionist is convicted. Otherwise, a convicted abortionist would be subject to a sentence of 5-7 years. As Baird constantly points out. "In 44 of the 50 states you can't have an abortion even if you are raped.

Some time mankind will have to wake up and grant you the right to help." As it stands today, Massachusetts does not seem ready to remove the married person restrictions of its birth control law. The change made in 1966 did make it possible for many women to seek help that had been denied them, but a vast area of need was utterly ignored. it rather than merely stave off its fatal effects with insulin. But the basic research Dr. Schepens plans with regard to the'optic-petui-tary link also bears directly, of course, on the riddle of diabetic retinopathy, even if it does not lead to a cure for diabetes.

And diabetic retinopathy, though it sounds like an esoteric disease next to such well-known eye problems as glaucoma or cataracts (diseases of the front of the eye), is becoming an increasing problem. It is one of those "modern" diseases that arise when medical science makes progress in remitting or curing another, long-established disorder. In this case, since diabetes has been brought under control with insulin, more people afflicted with the disease are living nearly normal lifespans. And diabetic retinopathy is one of the complications associated with having had diabetes for a long period of time. Dr.

Schepens concern with diabetic retinopathy, and with other degenerative eye diseases for which scientists have no explanations, provides the primary motivation for his retina research. In fact the ophthalmologist who founded the world's first retina service at the UX.l 23 years cies among college age women, caira says, ana 5000 babies born to girls aged 14 or under, it is pa-" tiently absurd to exclude women anywhere from birth control information and aid because of age or But there is little legis'-' lative sentiment for more reform. The only noise being made is that produced by Bill Baird as he continues his crusade, The alternative possibility would be the bringing of a judicial test by a doctor or group. This could happen this Winter. There has been some discussion among birth control reform advocates that a declaratory judgment proceeding be instituted with the goal of having the married women provision of the law declared uncon- -stitutional on the basis that, it amounts to discriminato- iy ueauneni unuer uie law.

i. i. -J 4 11 uiai uucau i ucvciup, Massachusetts will simply, continue to live with an- -11 i i 1 ilA mnor aur mar ie tittit ten into the books but is only enforced against those who dare to stand up and question it. ago, is just as much a clini-' cian as a researcher. He sees the need to bring research and patient care uu 111 IU provide researchers with the clues they need and to ensure mat iaD discoveries find their way into medical use as soon as possible.

As he put it last "We want to bring the laboratory to the bedside. We want to marry research and clinical work so closely that no one can tell which is which." There is no doubt that Dr. Schepens will, indeed, preside over this wedding. It was announced just Thursday that Chicago businessman W. Clement Stone has provided $1.5 million to buiM a unique surgical-patient care-teaching facility in the ME.E.I.'s new addition, scheduled for 1972 completion.

To be known as the Stone Retina Pavilion, the center will supply clinical facilities to complement the world-famous research facilities of the Retina Foundation, of which Dr. Schepens is research director not so coincidental-ly. With the doctor's interest in diseases that ob-. viously refuse to stay within the confines of ophthalmology, plus the new physical capabilities, there may be a fruitful reversal of the trend toward medical Noting the unexplained connection, Dr. Schepens formulated an hypothesis: "When light strikes the retina, there is an interchange of nerve signals with the pituitary as well as with the back of the brain." He further hypothesized that perception of light by the eye might mediate such phenomena as the so-called "Circadian rhythms" (the day-night cycles of bodily activity), the retention of water, development and growth, and other cyclical phenomena such as menstruation and ovulation.

the mind make possible the high cellular activity in the retina. In other parts of the body, this activity is accompanied by a richer blood ply, or vascularization, but the retina is relatively poor vascularly, and Dr. Schepens believes that somehow enzymes take over some blood functions. Thus the "why" as well as the "how" of enzyme operation in such areas as nerve function "can be much more easily studied than in the brain itself," the ophthalmologist said. "The retina Is a flattened piece of brain," Dr.

Schepens explained recently in the course of describing the new areas of research which he and his associates at the M.E.E.L and the Retina Foundation are planning to explore. In describing the retina as "the brain's antenna," the retinologist said: "This is brain, it is not merely like 'brain. In studying it, we may solve some of the problems of brain function." For instance, the known anatomical connection between the optic nerve and the pituitary gland has long bothered neurological researchers. The pitiutary is sometimes called the "master gland that regulates the hormone output of the body's other endocrine glands, mediating activities from growth to sexual functions to metabolic levels. window into the delicate innermost layer of the eyeball are beginning to take literally the poet's view of the eye as a window onto the mind, as well as the mind's window onto the outside world.

Some of the new frontiers that Dr. Schepens charts include: Studying the optic nerve as a "pathway for two-way traffic" instead of focusing attention only on the nerve signals sent from retina to the visual cortex at the back of the brain; Studying the possibility that the eye may be implicated in such non-visual mechanisms as the built-in "biological time clocks" that some scientists have been hypothesizing those mysterious automatic cycles that govern human as well as animal life; Studying certain eye diseases, such as diabetic retinopathy, that are associated with more general metabolic disorders, in the hope that by this route the causes of neurochemical imbalances that result in the larger disorder can be discovered; Studying the peculiar role that enzymes play in eye function. Noting that perhaps 100,000 different -enzymes function within the globe of the eye more than found anywhere else in the body Dr. Schepens suggested that these specialized proteins i I By RICHARD A. KNOX I Glob BUS I Poets have traditionally viewed the eye as the gateway of the mind, the mirror of the souL For ophthalmologists, the eye is something else again a specialized sense organ, self-contained and fantastically complex, with its own very special medical problems needing highly sophisticated treatment Now comes the question: Does the eye have any function other than eye-iight? Dr.

Charles L. Schepens, one of the world's foremost 0 thalmologists, suggested last week that the eye uues inueeu nave luiiw- tions other than eyesight, functions that help determine the metabolic activity of the entire body. "The eyes are the brain's antennae, asserted Dr. Schepens of the Mass. Eye and Ear Infirm ary (MXE.L), the Retina Foundation and Harvard Medical School.

If he Is right, and some Intriguing evidence suggests that he is, then ophthalmology is due for a shift in emphasis and importance, from a narrow specialty to a tool to unlock some of the secrets of brain function, neuro-chemistry, and how hormones regulate body activity. la ether words, Sche pens and others interested primarily in the retina "I 7 DR. CHARLES SCHEPENS (Glcba phcto by FhuTp N. Frtkton).