It has to be admitted that the American public has often been shockingly easy-going about responsibility for the sort of laws that its representatives enact, likewise that the public is often woefully pliant in accepting ready made opinions and policies without analysis. But it is to be hoped that there are enough citizens who are genuinely interested to help check misguided legislation and promote sound legislation on this subject, to prevent our country from making another great blunder in birth control legislation instead of correcting Comstock’s original blunder with a clean firm sweep. Standing up and being counted as a believer in birth control is not enough. Those who are on record in birth control organizations as adherents of “the cause” must see to it that their names are not linked to endorsements of bills which they do not approve. Birth control leaders, like members of Congress, will yield to public opinion, if it is clearly enough and forcibly enough expressed. It is time for every one who means well in this matter to do well also. The gist of the question is very simple and lucid. It has unfortunately been gummed up with all manner of excrescences. But they can all be readily scraped off by dint of the application of plain common sense and determination not to fool one’s self or to attempt to fool the public or the legislators. Also there is a considerable portion of the American public which cares about having the laws on this subject in harmony with the proud traditions of American ideals, the people to whom the guarantees of freedom of speech and of the press mean something, and who are keen to have the spirit of the Constitution lived up to, not so much because it is the Constitution as because those principles of freedom are vital to human progress and precious to human aspiration. There has always been a sizable body of opinion that all the Comstock laws are constitutional, as contrary to the United States Constitution and to the constitutions of the States. Forty-five of the forty-eight States in the Union have provisions in their constitutions or the Bill of Rights that “every man is given the right freely to write, speak and publish his opinions on all subjects, being responsible for the abuse of that privilege.” Twenty-six of the States give an additional safeguard providing that “No law shall ever be passed to restrain freedom of speech or of the press.” Courtlandt Palmer, in 1883 wrote a vigorous article in the “New York Observer” in criticism of the Comstock laws, in which he said: