Free Abortions for All?

President Nixon called it "one of the most serious challenges to human destiny in the last third of this century," and two years ago he asked Congress to establish a special commission to chart a response to the challenge. Last week the Commission on Population Growth and the American Future gave its answer: growth must slow down. "We will not like some of the solutions we will have to adopt," it said, "but unless we can resolve the question of population growth, it not only will aggravate our current problems but may eventually dwarf them."

The commission, which was headed by John D. Rockefeller III and included Congressmen, business and labor leaders and educators, was not so alarmist as some environmentalists. Rockefeller said that U.S. population growth "should be regarded neither as a crisis nor with complacency." Nonetheless, the commission warned that despite recent declines in the birth rate, "the baby boom is not over." An average of three children per family would mean a population of nearly a billion Americans in a hundred years.

The commission's proposals dealt with a wide range of social problems, but its most striking recommendations concerned birth control:

> A law should be enacted to help schools set up population, sex and birth-control education programs.

> State laws that restrict access to contraceptive information and supplies should be eliminated, and such materials should be available to minors.

> Present laws restricting abortion should be liberalized along the lines of the New York State statute, which permits abortions on request.

> Public and private health systems should pay the costs of all health services related to maternity, including abortion and voluntary sterilization.

The commission said it did not consider abortion as "a primary means" of limiting growth, but it argued that all women have a moral right to the "freedom to control their own fertility." President Nixon, however, has already declared emphatically that he considers abortion "an unacceptable form of population control."

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