Now as to the State laws. They are very similar in import and phraseology to the parent Federal law, Section 211, but they deal with other ways of circulating contraceptive knowledge and means than transportation by mail or express. The 24 States which have specific prohibitions, variously forbid publishing, advertising or giving the information. Fourteen States prohibit any one to tell. (Fancy trying to enforce such a law!) In most of these States the statute is similar to that in the District of Columbia, which even forbids the _telling_ of anything that “will be _calculated_ to lead another” to apply any information to the prevention of conception, and also makes it a crime to have in one’s possession any instructions to lend or give away. That is, the most ordinary channels for human relationship,—private conversation and the sort of help one friend or relative naturally gives to another,—become criminal where this subject is concerned. In several States private property and personal belongings can be searched by the authorities for “contraband” instructions. Colorado forbids anyone to bring contraceptive knowledge into the State. (The hold-up of traffic on the State line if that law were enforced, would be amazing to contemplate.) But Connecticut surely deserves the booby prize, for it has the grotesque distinction of being the one State to penalize the actual utilization of contraceptive information; in other words, the Connecticut law makes it a crime not only to find out how, but actually to _control_ conception. The enforcement of that law fairly staggers the imagination. What could have been in the minds of the legislators who passed it is a question.