This thought brings up the next point for consideration as to the sort of laws it is worth while to want. Even if the latest form of “doctors only” bill does break down the restrictions so that they would be a mere gesture rather than a genuine law, do you want any laws passed which are based on the idea of privilege? If so, would you be willing to be quite candid about it? Would you be willing to ask a member of Congress to introduce a bill which would be a legal permit for certain people to give contraceptive information and certain people to buy and sell contraceptives, and would forbid all other people to do the same? If you would shrink from such a blatant betrayal of democratic American principles as that, are you not in all conscience bound to stand for a law which would be true to those principles? If you were not willing to do openly and directly a thing which you knew to be unsound in principle, could you possibly persuade yourself to do it indirectly? Suppose then you have a healthy scorn of pretensions, legal and otherwise, and you find yourself averse to any legislation that could be rightly deemed double-faced, and you proceed in your survey of legislative proposals. You may find that the point about the need for personal prescription of contraceptives which is so stressed in behalf of the “doctors only” bills, still troubles you. You wonder perhaps, if there is not some sound way to make a legal provision that would work out so as to give the people just what they individually need in the way of contraceptives and protect them from means that are unsafe or ineffective. If so, there are these facts to consider. There is doubtless great advantage in having the personal advice of a thoroughly well informed physician as to contraceptive method. It is reassuring if nothing else, even if not imperatively needed in most cases. For average individuals with normal physique a professional prescription is by no means always necessary. But exceptional physical conditions do need special attention, such as only the doctor or an experienced nurse can give. Under the present handicap of the laws, advice from a competent physician is of especial use because he can warn his patient against the many worthless and even harmful methods which are being secretly advocated. But when publications on the subject can be openly circulated, the difference between the good and bad methods can be made clear by authoritative spokesmen, and the general public can learn the main facts about this sort of hygiene in the same natural way that they learn about dental and dietetic hygiene, and so forth. There is no need to make a medical mystery of this knowledge, or to assume that the public will be lost in hopeless ignorance unless a doctor prescribes specially for each individual. The simplicity of some of the best methods makes such an attitude an absurdity.