Court and press: Battle ahead?
Raw'
By JAMES WECHSLER places fo
PRESIDENT Nixon and Attorney as secure
General Mitchell may have hope tha
lost more than a legal battle in the somethin
Supreme Court. For many pub- freedom
lishers and editors throughout the ernment
country the story beyond the bul- DURIN
letin heralding the 6-3 courtroom cording I
victory of The Times and the Wash- survey,A
ington Post is the reminder that endorsen
another Nixon term would surely papers w
open the way to a more succpssful bert Hun
assault on the First Amendment.
In vie
What we have won is a reprieve decision
in a dramatic race against time. with the
Justice Hugo Black is now 85; Jus- all reaso
tice Douglas, at 72, has long been
plagued by illness. Two additional But in
Nixon men can destroy the fragile not begi
majority that saved the press from It was in
an unprecedented era of "prior re- New Ye
straint" this time. It must also be thereafte
added, on the basis of the grudg- citadelsc
ing tones of his assent, that Byron long bee;
"Whizzer" White was apparently "Eastern
brought kicking and screaming to may wel
the side of the majority. He can insensiti
hardly be called a pillar of free- which n
dom. land" of
menaced
I MAY be too sanguine in sug-
gesting that the shock-impact of What
this encounter will sway many anticipate
press voices when the next Presi- was the
dential campaign begins. Yet the ret" doe
evidence suggests that there was time adn
remarkably broad - and biparti- obtained
san - press resistance to this lishers a
Mitchell offensive; some of the fight for'
staunchest objectors were Nixon zled'
fans in 1968. Thus,a
It may be sadly true that some Court ac
of the papers heard from in this tion had
challenge to repression h a v e shambles
shown less diligent concern for the from the
Bill of Rights when institutions and tion Cec
individuals other than the press been de
were threatened. After all, Mr. press s
Nixon bluntly warned during his judges s
campaign that he was resolved to PLEAS
remake the Warren court in his was, th
own image; few press lords ima- temperer
gined at the time that their own For on
liberties might so swiftly be tar- start, th
gets of a reduced regard in high censors
sex information
Con trace
or rights too long viewed
e. One cannot suppress the
t some men have learned
g about the indivisibility of
from this brush with gov-
censorship.
EG the 1968 campaign, ac-
o an Editor and Publisher
Mr. Nixon had the editorial
sent of 634 daily news-
while only 146 backed Hu-
mphrey.
w of that arithmetic, his
to invite a confrontation
press may seem to defy
on.
fact, of course, this did
n as a sweeping crusade.
nitially aimed only at The
ork Times and, shortly
r, the Washington Post,
of what Spiro Agnew had
n depicting as the cinister
Establishment." There
1 have been a blundering
vity about the extent to
ewspapers in the "heart-
f the nation would feel
by the proceedings.
almost certainly was un-
ed by the administration
fashion in which the "sec-
uments would spread each
new restraining order was
- and how many pub-
nd editors would carry the
ward as others were muz-
by the time the Supreme
ted the government's posi-
become a public relations
s; Sen. Gravel's excerpts
documents were flooding
ciated Press wire. Opera-
isorship had in actuality
stroyed by a memorable
mutiny even before the
poke.
SURABLE as the outcome
e celebration should be
d by many considerations.
e thing, as indicated at the
e setback inflicted on the
is not irretrievable; Mr.
Nixon's reelection could quickly
establish a new majority on the
court.
Moreover, the Vietnam war goes
on, and we have not heard the last
word about the Pentagon papers.
It will not be too long before dema-
gogues begin ascribing any new
reverses on that front to the dis-
closures; Solicitor General Gris-
wold opened the door to such rhe-
toric when he described the varie-
ties of future calamity that might
ensue if the government lost its
case. Justice Blackmun's dissent
crudely encouraged such hysteria.
Mr. Nixon's gift for scapegoat-
hunting was demonstrated long
ago.
And in much of the country there
remains confusion and unease. A
Newsweek poll this week reported
that 48 per cent of those inter-
viewed disapproved the injunction
moves while 33 per cent approved
and 19 per cent had no opinion. But
the same poll reported that 47 per
cent regarded the danger that."na-
tional security might be harmed"
as a weightier concern than the
freedom of the press had been vio-
lated"; 34 per cent disagreed.
In short, a great legal test is
over but the turmoil endures. Its
echoes will be audible during the
long pre-election months of 1972;
there is no reason to believe that
the Administration has been sob-
ered by this defeat, or that it has
acquired any new reverence for
the Bill of Rights. At this juncture
it may be prudent to invoke all our
powers of prayer for the health of
those judges who held the line for
the First Amendment. Until at least
November, 1972, they are truly in-
dispensable men,
(New York east
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Friday, July 9, 1971 News Phone: 764-0552
NIGHT EDITOR: ANITA CRONE
ptive effectiveness
9. .
Sitmmer Edi/torial Staf
MARCIA ABRAMSON LARRY LEMPERT
Co-Editor Co-Editor
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(EDITOR'S NOTE: This regular
question-and-answer column on
matters of sesual concern is being
published ins-operation with the
Office of Student services. Ques-
tions should be sent to Sox 25, The
Daily, 420 Maynard, or phoned in-
to 76-GUIDE, the Counseling Sees-
ires' 24-houc counseling and refer-
ral service.)
By ROBERT KOOP
Q. You said that the condom
was effective 80 to 90 percent of
the time. What does that mean?
Does that mean that if I use a
condom ten times my wife will
get pregnant once?
. A. No. And I'm sorry if I gave
that impression. I'm afraid I fell
into the old academic trap of as-
suming that everyone understood
my jargon. So many people (I've
discovered) are confused about
statistics -on contraceptive meth-
ods that I think I'll give you all a
complete explanation.
All the statistics I'll give you
- and probably all the ones you'll
come across - are measures of
use-effectiveness. What t h a t
means is that they tell you how
successful a method is when it's
used by real people in their real
lives. It is not a measurement of
theoretical effectiveness or of
effectiveness under laboratory
conditions.
This is the way it's figured out:
1300 multiplied by the total num-
ber of conceptions divided by the
total number of months of ex-
posurenequals the failure rate per
hundred woman years.
This is what all that means:
The formula assumes that a
woman ovulates thirteen times a
year. That's thirteen times she
can get pregnant. That's multi-
plied by 100 to make it come out
as a percentage.
Total number of conceptions'-is
just that - full-term pregnan-'
cies, miscarriages, abortions. To-
tal number of months of exposure
is also just that. It doesn't count
months when the woman is al-
ready pregnant, when she's not
having regular heterosexual con-
tact, or when she's not ovulating
for some reason unrelated to the
method of contraception being
checked out.
For example, if 50 women use
an IUD for ten months and only
one gets pregnant, the formula
says: 1300 times I divided by
500, or 2.6 per cent.
This figure, the failure rate
per hundred woman years, can
be thought of either as the num-
ber of unwanted pregnancies that
would occur in a hundred women
over one year or that would occur
in one woman over a hundred
years of fertility and regular in-
tercourse.
If 'you're not planning to be
fertile for a hundred years, it
might be easier to think of it as
four times the number of times
you can expect to get pregnant
over a twenty-five year period.
It's interesting to note that the
failure rate for unprotected in-
tercourse is 40 - which means
that you can expect to have about
ten or twelve kids in your life-
time if you don't do anything
about it.
So, anyway, back to the ques-
tion. What I meant when I said
that was that the failure rate per
hundred women years for con-
doms is between ten and twenty.
So if you use a condom regularly
for twenty-fives years you can
expect two to five pregnancies.
On the other hand, there's a
bit of a problem here. Statistics
are only statistics, and you are
you. There's a lot of evidence that
motivation is a big determining
factor in the failure of contra-
ceptives. That is, a man who be-
lieves that a condom dulls his
pleasure may "forget" it every so
often. A woman who finds in-
serting a diaphragm distasteful
may "forget" to use it once in a
while.
If you're highly motivated and
you're conscientious about what-
ever method you use, your chanc-
es of failure may be a good bit
lower than those of the average
woman or man.
Theoretically, given conscien-
tious use, the condom has a fail-
ure rate per hundred woman
years (hpy) of from five to zero.
The Pill, theroetically 100 per cent
effective, has a failure rate per
hpy of 0.05 - probably mostly
caused by women forgetting to
take one every day.
For you information, here are
the failure rates for most contra-
ceptive methods:
The Pill ....... . 0.05
Condom and foam .. 0.1 - 5.0
IUD ..............1.5 - 8.0
Condom ............. 5 - 20
Diaphragm and jelly . 10 - 20
Vaginal spermicides 15 - 25
Rhythm method ... 15 - 30. .
Coitus interruptus .. 20 - 30
Nothing at all ..........40
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I
Sun'mer Sports Staff
The only bad thing about being part of this
fad is when it's over we'll still be dogs!"