PART I

WHAT SORT OF LAWS HAVE WE NOW?

CHAPTER PAGE

I. THE SITUATION 3

The actual situation under federal and state law—Not even parents can lawfully inform their married children about how to space their babies—No doctor can lawfully or adequately study the control of conception—Provisions of the federal law—Scope of state laws—Clinics under state laws—Access to birth control information not only criminal, but classed with obscenity—Control of conception confused with abortion—Precise meaning of term birth control in modern application—Not a crime to control parenthood but a crime to find out how—What if that principle were applied to some other scientific knowledge, making automobiles, for instance?

II. HOW IT HAPPENED 19

How it came about that information concerning one item of science became a criminal indecency—Anthony Comstock’s blundering bequest to the people—Congress an unwitting partner—States hastily followed suit—United States the only country to class contraceptive information with penalized indecency—Legislation aimed at indecency but hit science—Europe laughs at our “Comstockery”—Documentary proof that Comstock and his successor, Sumner, did not expect laws to prevent doctors from giving and normal people from using contraceptive instructions.

III. IS ENFORCEMENT POSSIBLE? 46

Relatively few indictments in over fifty years—Ulterior motive in many of those—Post Master General Hays’s leaning toward revision—Post Master General Work’s gesture for enforcement—Clinic reports and medical research data unlawfully published and mailed—Misleading criminal advertisements go unpunished—Government itself breaks the law—Forbidden books found in Congressional Library—Senators and Congressmen willing to break law, but hesitate to revise it.