Confidential Revisited

On the heels of a California state senate investigation aimed at keeping Hollywood smut out of the scandal magazines (TIME, March 11), a federal grand jury in Chicago last week struck at the nation's best-selling scandal magazine for putting smut in the mail. In a six-count indictment, New York-based Confidential and its Mount Morris (Ill.) distributing agency, the Kable Printing Co., were charged with mailing "nonmailable matter . . . which gives . . . information on how and by what means abortion may be produced." What prompted the indictment was an article in the March 1956 issue of Confidential headed: "The Pill That Ends Unwanted Pregnancy." Though written in the magazine's characteristically pious style ("Beware the Newest Abortion Menace"), the article was a sort of do-it-yourself commentary on a new antileukemia drug (retail price: $4.50 per 100 pills) that ended pregnancy in eleven of 15 women selected by doctors for therapeutic abortions. If convicted, Confidential and its distributor could each be fined up to $30,000.

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