Birth control laws : $b shall we keep them, change them, or abolish themDennett, Mary Ware
History
Birth control laws : $b shall we keep them, change them, or abolish them
Dennett, Mary Ware
Birth control; Birth control -- Law and legislation -- United States
Four years after the first petition slips were circulated asking for
the repeal of the Comstock laws which ban contraceptive knowledge the
first “doctors only” bill was proposed. Three years after the first
State repeal bill was actually introduced, the first State “doctors
only” bill was introduced. A somewhat similar sequence occurred as to
Federal legislation. The first petitions to Congress for a straight
repeal were circulated in 1915, and the Federal “doctors only”
proposition first appeared in 1924; the first bill for a straight
Federal repeal was actually introduced in 1923, and by the time these
words are read a Federal “doctors only” bill may be before Congress.
At the present writing it is announced as a definite plan. The limited
legislation has in all these instances been initiated by Margaret
Sanger.
It is a wide reach from her position of ten years ago, when breaking,
not correcting, the laws was urged, to her position of to-day when
limited, permissive legislation is being recommended to State
legislatures, to Congress and to the public. The former policy was
one of vehement scorn of the indecent laws and the object was to get
contraceptive information directly to the people in the quickest way
possible by published information and clinical service,—regardless
of the law; a striking contrast to the propositions of the last two
years for laws to keep the subject of contraception still classed with
obscenity and to let no one have it except those who personally apply
to physicians and to let no one give it except physicians.
To account for Mrs. Sanger’s extraordinary swing of the pendulum from
revolutionary defiance of all law to advocacy of special-privilege
class legislation is not germane to the aim of this book. So far
as the public is concerned the explanation, whatever it may be,
does not matter. But what does matter is that there is destined to
be wide-spread appeal for this type of legislation, because the
organization which is back of it has more funds for publicity than have
ever been had before by any groups in this country working for birth
control progress; and the time is at hand for American citizens to put
on their spectacles and look thoughtfully at the basically different
types of legislation which they are urged to support, and to decide
what they want, with their eyes wide open.
The main points for the straight repeal type of legislation have been
given in the previous chapters on the Cummins-Vaile Bill which has
been before Congress for over two years. The points for the proposed
“doctors only” type will be given as far as possible by excerpts from
the written or published words of the proponents, together with some
comparisons which may be of aid to the reader in making a sort of
mental parallel column for convenience in surveying the differences
between the two types.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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