Sex and the Mortgage

Stocks and bonds, yes, but birth control pills as collateral for a loan? Al most. A year ago, Martin Lewicke, a Navy petty officer second class, sought a mortgage to buy a $27,000 house in Arlington, Va. He knew that his $7,660 pay was not sufficient leverage, but he figured that his wife's $11,000-a-year job as a magazine editor would qualify them for the loan. Leon Graybill of the Floyd E. Davis Mortgage Corp. agreed, but how, he wanted to know, could he feel confident that Carol Lewicke would not get pregnant, leave her job and default on the payments?

Graybill recalls that he only wanted a note saying that the couple was practicing birth control -- known in the field as a "baby letter" or "Pill letter." But Mrs. Lewicke figured that he wanted even more. She wrote a letter saying that she did not want to have any chil dren, that she would have an abortion if she got pregnant, and that her hus band would have a vasectomy if the loan company so wished. Once the loan was secured, she set about to rid the mortgage business of the common demand for baby letters. Independently, three national women's groups have taken up the cause and have filed a complaint with the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. The question it poses: Must some women mortgage the cradle to get the homestead?

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.