Defending Contraceptive Counselors

To the Editors of The Crimson:

We are writing in response to E. Adam Webb's letter to the editor in Saturday, September 19 Crimson entitled "Counselors Counsel Irresponsibility." In his letter, Mr. Webb claims that Peer Contraceptive Counselors (PCC) has "deserted its sole mission of teaching prevention and precuation through contraceptives" and is now instead "teaching freedom from moral and ethical constraints: irresponsibility."

This "irresponsibility" manfested itself in PCC's supposed description of abortion and the morning after pill as methods of contraception at a proctoral outreach last spring. What Mr. Webb has claimed as fact is actually fiction: PCC has not and does not advocate either abortion or the morning after pill as methods of contraception.

To avoid further misunderstandings, PCC is a group of 10 undergraduate men and women trained to counsel on issues of contraception, sex, relationships, sexually transmitted diseases, pregnancy, and abortion. Aside from our weekly office hours we do outreaches for almost all of the first-year proctor groups. In these outreaches we present basic information about condoms, foam, the contraceptive sponge, the diaphragm, the contraceptive pill and natural methods of contraception.

We also discuss two non-contraceptive options that are clearly stated as such: withdrawal and the morning after pill. We briefly mention the availability of abortions, but do not discuss the topic at all.

We begin our outreaches by saying that abstinence is the only 100 percent effective form of birth control. We also state clearly that our presence is not intended to make assumptions about individual sexual activity and/or heterosexuality. Our outreaches are designed to present information, not to "teach sexual responsibility" to Harvard-Radcliffe students.

The fact that we don't assume responsiblity for the moral and ethical decisions of members of the Harvard-Radcliffe community does not render us "charlatans" or "radical" advocates of "free love propoganda." Rather, we know that Harvard-Radcliffe students are capable of making their own decisions about issues of sex and sexual activity. PCC has no wish to "indoctrinate" students, but rather to provide them with the information and the space in which to make decisions consistent with their lifestyles. Michele S. Jaffe '91   Laura A. Rosenbury '92   Co-directors, PCC