When the question of birth control legislation has been brought up at meetings of medical associations, it is perhaps safe to say that more resolutions have been killed in committee than have been submitted to the members for a vote, the reasons being about the same as those which have inhibited Congress, including “consideration” for the feelings of Catholic members. The vote on those which have been submitted has depended considerably on the way the resolution was worded, and somewhat on who proposed the resolution. This is no disparagement on medical associations. It might quite as truthfully be said of almost any sort of organization. It is a human failing to vote aye in meetings, on any proposition which has a generally good-sounding purpose, or which is introduced by some one in whom the people present have general confidence. It is only occasionally that resolutions are dissected with care by any large body of people and voted upon with full comprehension of their meaning. This human disability operates just as effectively one way as another, unless the question at issue is very clear-cut and the pro and con positions are very sharply defined. It seems more than likely that many medical associations would quite readily endorse such a bill as that drafted by Mr. Worthington and described in the last chapter, if some one were to present it with a speech emphasizing the need of the people to have reliable scientific information and to be protected from all manner of quackery and commercialism, and if nothing were said about how the bill leaves the subject of contraception still a criminal indecency, and how such a law could not possibly be enforced to give the protection it is aimed to provide, or how it would establish a class privilege in the exploitation of birth control information. On the other hand it is just as likely that many medical associations would endorse the Cummins-Vaile Bill, if it were presented as a means for rescuing contraceptive science from all legal connection with indecency, and giving to the medical profession the opportunity it has long needed, to study and teach the control of conception, on the same basis that it teaches all other subjects which relate to health, that is, with freedom; and also an opportunity to put out of business, by critical publicity, the vendors of worthless or harmful contraceptives, who are now carrying on camouflaged or boot-legging operations. Indeed such endorsement has already been made by a number of medical associations, as well as by hundreds of well known individual physicians. While resolutions in general may usually be taken with a grain of salt, it is also fair to assume that neither medical associations nor any other groups of intelligent American citizens would naturally take a stand against the principle of freedom in education, if they once recognized the issue clearly.