CONTRACEPTIVES AUTHORIZED BY MEDICAL BOARDS (Suggested tentatively by Sen. Cummins and others.) This would be class legislation which is against American principles and would rouse the antagonism of scientists who do not belong to the medical associations, whose Boards would be given such jurisdiction. CERTIFICATION BY THE DEPARTMENT OF MEDICAL AND CHEMICAL RESEARCH OF THE NATIONAL PUBLIC HEALTH SERVICE (Suggested at the Chicago Physicians’ Conference.) This received less opposition than any other proposition to vest authority in any group, but it was subject to more or less the same objection that held in regard to the proposal to vest authority in public officials or medical Boards. MARGARET SANGER’S PROPOSED “DOCTORS ONLY” LEGISLATION This is suggested Federal legislation by which the Obscenity Statutes would not apply to doctors giving contraceptive instructions or prescriptions to other physicians or to their bona fide patients, nor to manufacturers and dealers in drugs who execute the physician’s prescriptions. This proposition was disapproved on several counts. _First_, because it leaves the subject of contraceptive science still classed with obscenity. _Second_, it is merely a permit to physicians to do what would be a crime under the obscenity law, for anyone else to do. _Third_, it would establish a medical economic monopoly of the circulation of contraceptive knowledge. _Fourth_, it would substantially deprive the medical profession of the very opportunity it purports to provide, namely, to study contraceptive science for the benefit of the public and the perfection of methods. _Fifth_, it does not make medical publishing on contraceptives any more practicable than it is under the present law. _Sixth_, it would not permit the importation of scientific contraceptive data from abroad. The conference took place before Mrs. Sanger had abandoned this form of “doctors only” bill in favor of the form subsequently drafted by Mr. Worthington, as described in the previous chapter. Some of these criticisms are not applicable to the Worthington draft, but the first and second ones do apply. Testing out all these propositions in the light of Dr. Pusey’s warning that the United States should avoid any more “silly” laws on this subject, all but one are open to further objection in the ground of wholesale unenforceability. The present protective section of the Cummins-Vaile Bill is the least unenforceable, with its provision for certification of methods by at least five licensed physicians. Under that provision there would be relatively little temptation to evade the law. But all the others would be more or less unenforceable, the Sanger proposition most of all.