It was known that there were many members of the Academy who were not accurately represented by this decision, and who did want the subject removed from the obscenity statutes, instead of merely permitting physicians to infringe the law without being subject to penalty; indeed some of the more prominent of the twenty-nine members of the Health Committee had previously signed the statement of endorsement which constituted the platform of the Voluntary Parenthood League, and which contains the following paragraphs: We desire to help in supporting a body of public opinion, which will lead to so amending the Federal and State laws that it will not be a criminal offense to give out information on the subject of birth control, and that such information will not be classed with obscenity and indecency. We believe that the question as to whether or not, and when a woman should have a child is not a question for physicians to decide—except when a woman’s life is endangered—or for the clergy or for the State legislators to decide, but a question for the individual family concerned to decide. For these reasons the Health Committee was asked to reconsider, but declined, although some of the members as individuals expressed sympathy with the broader aims of the freedom legislation. A few months later, the new protective clause of the Cummins-Vaile Bill, or at least the fore-runner of it, was formulated. This was to provide a separate statute, quite apart from the obscenity sections, to the effect that “no printed information as to methods of preventing conception and no ingredients compounded for the purpose of preventing conception shall be transportable through the mails or by any other public carrier in the United States except such as bear endorsement by duly licensed physicians or public health authorities.” It was thought by the officers of the Voluntary Parenthood League that such an addition to the bill would meet the views of those who wanted medical restrictions for the sake of protection to the public, at the same time that it was not class or privilege legislation, and it was consistent with the main part of the bill by which the subject was removed from the obscenity laws. So once more the Health Committee of the Academy of Medicine was asked to consider. The answer this time was that the Secretary did not “believe that the Committee would care to take up the matter of amendments anew.” In conversation later the secretary said that it was not the function of the Committee “to determine exact legal phraseology, but merely to express broad principles” which they had sufficiently done previously, when they adopted the report of their sub-committee. He did, however, express his own interest in the fact that the League seemed to have “come around” to the view of the Academy Committee. He evidently did not grasp the wide difference in principle and see that the Academy Committee recommendation would establish a