Mr. Vaile in his opening remarks said: “These bills do not propose any new or strange legislation, and these bills themselves do not propose to teach birth control.” He was at once interrupted by Mr. Hersey who asked, “You said that this is no new matter. Is there any legislation of this sort that has been passed hitherto?” To which Mr. Vaile replied, “The legislation on this matter consists of our statutes classifying contraceptives as obscene of themselves. We are the only country in the world having this legislation. We did not have it prior to 1873. The bill, therefore, proposes no new or affirmative doctrine. It simply proposes to make lawful what was lawful in the United States prior to 1873. It does not propose to do this by any new or affirmative legislation, but by simply striking those provisions from five sections of our Penal Code.” “Let me, at the outset, refer to a question which immediately bobs up in the minds of everybody with whom you discuss this subject. They say, “It will promote immorality.” Let me ask the committee, in all fairness, if the morality of this country is strikingly superior now to what it was before 1873. You can not pick up a daily paper, you can not go into a church, you can not hear a subject of public morals discussed to any great length by any speaker but what you will be advised that we are at a lower stage of morals than we were 50 years ago. Fifty years ago we did not have such a statute on our books. Certainly the insertion of this proviso in our statutes has not noticeably increased the morality of the United States. It is common knowledge that methods of contraception are used by the educated, the well-to-do classes of the community. Would anybody say that these classes are conspicuously less moral than those who can not obtain this information and have no knowledge of it? I think that would be a great reflection on many people, with certainly a highly developed civic consciousness, people prominent in every good work of the community, all of whom as a matter of common knowledge, of which this committee can take judicial notice, do have and use this information.... “I submit, in all fairness, by merely removing the provisions which we put into the code 50 years ago, and which did not exist theretofore, we won’t be rushing on a downward path, so far as we can judge by our own experience of that of any other country. “Now, that raises another question. Is lack of knowledge the best method or even a safe method to prevent vice? Would you insult your daughters by insinuating to them that it is only because they can not get such information as this that they remain good? Of course you would not. Why, then, pass that insult to every other daughter in the United States?