This is not the situation with the poorer people of the United States,
however. Millions of them know nothing of reliable contraceptives.
When women of the impoverished strata of society do not break these
laws against contraceptives, they violate those laws of their inner
beings which tell them not to bring children into the world to live in
want, disease and general misery. They break the first law of nature,
which is that of self preservation. Bound by false morals, enchained
by false conceptions of religion, hindered by false laws, they endure
until the pressure becomes so great that morals, religion and laws
alike fail to restrain them. Then they for a brief respite resort to
the surgeon's instruments.
For many years the semi-official witch hunting of the Comstock
organization had a remarkable and a deadly effect. Everyone, whether
it was novelist, essayist, publicist, propagandist or artist, who
sought to throw definite light upon the forbidden subject of sex, or
upon family limitation, was prosecuted if detected. Among the many
books suppressed were works by physicians designed to warn young men
and women away from the pitfalls of venereal diseases and sexual
errors. The darkness that surrounded the whole field of sex was made
as complete as possible.
Since then the feeling of the awakened women of America has
intensified. The rapidity with which women are going into industry,
the increasing hardship and poverty of the lower strata of society,
the arousing of public conscience, have all operated to give force and
volume to the demand for woman's right to control her own body that
she may work out her own salvation.
Those who believe in strictly legal measures, as well as those who
believe both in legal measures and in open defiance of these brutal
and unjust laws, are demanding amendments to the obscenity statutes,
which shall remove information concerning contraceptives from its
present classification among things filthy and obscene.
An amendment typical of those offered is that drawn up for the New
York statutes under the direction of Samuel McClure Lindsey, of
Columbia University. The words and sentences in italics are those
which it proposed to add:
"(Section 1145.) Physicians' instruments _and information_. An article
or instrument used or applied by physicians lawfully practicing, or by
their direction or prescription, for the cure or prevention of
disease, is not an article of indecent or immoral nature or use,
within this article. The supplying of such articles to such physicians
or by their direction or prescription, is not an offense under this
article. _The giving by a duly licensed physician or registered nurse
lawfully practicing, of information or advice in regard to, or the
supplying to any person of any article or medicine for the prevention
of, conception is not a violation of any provision of this article._"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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