“This League specifically declares that to classify purely scientific information regarding human contraception as obscene, as our present laws do, is itself an act affording a most disgraceful example of intolerable indecency. “Information, when scientifically sound, should be readily available. Such knowledge is of immediate and positive individual and social benefit. All laws which hamper the free and responsible diffusion of this knowledge among the people are in the highest degree pernicious and opposed to the best and most permanent interests of society.” The National Birth Control League then, constituted the first organized and sustained effort in America to concentrate on the repeal of the specific prohibitions regarding the circulation of birth control knowledge. The petition to Congress in the seventies, had included contraceptive knowledge in its protest, but was not circulated for that reason alone. It was a protest against the general content of the Comstock laws. The National Birth Control League at once set about the publication of literature urging the repeal of the laws, and circulated petition slips for the amendment of both State and Federal laws, which read as follows: _TO THE STATE LEGISLATURE_ As a voter of this State, I hereby urge you to secure the amendment of the penal law, so that giving information concerning methods of birth control by the avoidance of conception may no longer be classed as a crime in the laws of this State. Name ............................... Address .......................... _TO THE CONGRESS OF THE UNITED STATES_ As a voter, I hereby urge you to secure the amendment of the Federal Penal Code so that the transportation of information concerning methods of birth control by the avoidance of conception may no longer be classed as a crime in the laws of this country. Name ............................... Address ..........................