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
_Whereas_, one of the primary necessities for family and therefore
for public health, is an intelligently determined interval between
pregnancies, to be secured by regulating the inception of life and
not by interfering with life after it starts, and
_Whereas_, the prohibition of the circulation of information on the
control of conception should never have been included in Federal or
State “obscenity” laws,
_Be It Resolved_, that the House of Delegates of the American Medical
Association recommends the removal of this prohibition from the
“obscenity” statutes, and
_Be It Further Resolved_, that for the protection of the public
against unhygienic information, new separate statutes be enacted,
providing that all information circulated and all materials sold for
the purpose of controlling conception, must bear specific endorsement
by duly licensed physicians.”
For some unexplained reason the resolution disappeared from
consideration. The only indication of a reason was one which hardly
seems to be sufficient to be the whole cause, namely, that owing to
a delay in printing the tentative report, the members of the Council
on Health and Public Instruction received letters from interested
physician members of the Voluntary Parenthood League, urging the
adoption of the resolution, previous to their receiving from the
Secretary of the Council copies of the tentative report containing the
resolution. It seems unlikely that an unwitting mishap of this sort
would be the only thing which prevented procedure, if procedure was
what was wanted. Judging by letters from the interviews with members of
the Council, there was general hospitality to the idea embodied in the
resolution.
When Dr. Litchfield spoke at the second Hearing on the Cummins-Vaile
Bill in May, 1924, it will be remembered that he replied to Congressman
Hersey’s question as to “why have you not succeeded in getting them
(the American Medical Association) to adopt this?” by saying,
The medical society has been very busy, but they will do this
eventually. The President of the American Medical Association told
me so. I met him in conference at Atlantic City, and he said all the
members were in favor of birth control, and it was only a question of
time when we should have it. I am not authorized to give his name,
but he stands as the first man in American medicine.
When Dr. William Allen Pusey became President of the American Medical
Association, he made a very forthright appeal for the utilization of
contraceptive knowledge, as imperative for health and social welfare,
and he is opposed to the retention of the Comstock laws. In his address
at the last International Neo-Malthusian Conference, in New York, he
said:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account