The inclusion in the bill of “reprints” from “standard medical and scientific journals” practically breaks down any sort of practicable restriction. For any one can make reprints. If reprints, as well as the books and journals themselves are made mailable, it means that almost any one who wants contraceptive information can get it, and anyone who wants to can give it. And if, as has probably been the case, there is any idea on the part of those who devised this form of legislation, that restrictions of this sort will prevent “the wrong people” from getting contraceptive information, or will prevent the abuse of contraceptive knowledge, they might as well abandon the idea at the start, as to try to inflict so unenforceable a statute upon American citizens, who are already staggering under a huge mass of unenforced and unenforceable laws. Those who are impelled to misuse contraceptives, and to abuse the knowledge are quite clever enough to utilize “reprints” from the best authorities on contraception. There would be no such thing as keeping the knowledge within what anyone’s notion of what proper bounds may be. There is no such thing now, even with our sweeping and unqualified laws. This proposed bill makes the effort to limit the accessibility of knowledge into a mere gesture. True it might fool many people who do not stop to think or to analyze the bill, and it may even deceive those who propose it; but can it fool all the people? And can it fool Congress? That is the question for the American public to decide. As such a statute could not possibly keep the information within the bounds of the medical profession and those to whom the doctors specially imparted it, and as information under such a statute would circulate about as much as if a straight repeal of the ban were made, why bother with a circuitous, undignified, impracticable law, when a simple straight-forward repeal is possible, one which involves no preposterous complications as to interpretation or enforcement, and one which puts the subject of the control of conception, so far as the law is concerned, on a clean and self-respecting basis? PART III WHAT SORT OF LAWS DO THE PEOPLE REALLY WANT? CHAPTER I DO PHYSICIANS WANT A “DOCTORS ONLY” BILL?