CHAPTER VI

A “DOCTORS ONLY” FEDERAL BILL

_“Doctors only” Federal bill followed straight repeal bill just as limited bills in States followed straight repeal bills: Advocated on Margaret Sanger’s initiative: Provides medical monopoly of extreme type: Arguments in its behalf analyzed and answered: Proponents of “doctors only” bill do not live up to own demands for limiting contraceptive instruction to personal service by doctors: Birth control periodical carries thinly veiled advertisements for contraceptives: Improved type of “doctors only” bill drafted by George Worthington: Not so many loop-holes and inconsistencies as in first bill proposed, but still a special privilege bill and still leaves subject classed with obscenity: Worthless as means of curbing abuse of contraceptive knowledge: Clause permitting “reprints” from medical and scientific journals practically breaks down all restrictions: Makes pretense at limitation a farce._

Four years after the first petition slips were circulated asking for the repeal of the Comstock laws which ban contraceptive knowledge the first “doctors only” bill was proposed. Three years after the first State repeal bill was actually introduced, the first State “doctors only” bill was introduced. A somewhat similar sequence occurred as to Federal legislation. The first petitions to Congress for a straight repeal were circulated in 1915, and the Federal “doctors only” proposition first appeared in 1924; the first bill for a straight Federal repeal was actually introduced in 1923, and by the time these words are read a Federal “doctors only” bill may be before Congress. At the present writing it is announced as a definite plan. The limited legislation has in all these instances been initiated by Margaret Sanger.

It is a wide reach from her position of ten years ago, when breaking, not correcting, the laws was urged, to her position of to-day when limited, permissive legislation is being recommended to State legislatures, to Congress and to the public. The former policy was one of vehement scorn of the indecent laws and the object was to get contraceptive information directly to the people in the quickest way possible by published information and clinical service,—regardless of the law; a striking contrast to the propositions of the last two years for laws to keep the subject of contraception still classed with obscenity and to let no one have it except those who personally apply to physicians and to let no one give it except physicians.

To account for Mrs. Sanger’s extraordinary swing of the pendulum from revolutionary defiance of all law to advocacy of special-privilege class legislation is not germane to the aim of this book. So far as the public is concerned the explanation, whatever it may be, does not matter. But what does matter is that there is destined to be wide-spread appeal for this type of legislation, because the organization which is back of it has more funds for publicity than have ever been had before by any groups in this country working for birth control progress; and the time is at hand for American citizens to put on their spectacles and look thoughtfully at the basically different types of legislation which they are urged to support, and to decide what they want, with their eyes wide open.

The main points for the straight repeal type of legislation have been given in the previous chapters on the Cummins-Vaile Bill which has been before Congress for over two years. The points for the proposed “doctors only” type will be given as far as possible by excerpts from the written or published words of the proponents, together with some comparisons which may be of aid to the reader in making a sort of mental parallel column for convenience in surveying the differences between the two types.

The first formulation of a Federal “doctors only” bill was announced in the Birth Control Review of March, 1924, as the official stand of the President (Margaret Sanger) and the Board of Directors of the American Birth Control League.

The Bill was drawn up for the League by Mr. Robert E. Goldsby with the aid of Dr. J. P. Chamberlin of the Columbia Law School. Its provisions cover communications from doctors to each other and to their patients, and also the transport of Birth Control material from manufacturer to dealer, and from wholesaler to retailer, and to physicians.

It adds to Section 211 of the Criminal Code the following amendment:

Any article, instrument, substance, drug, or thing designed, adapted or intended for preventing conception, or any written or printed information or advice concerning the prevention of conception is not non-mailable under this section when mailed by a duly licensed physician (a) to another person known to him to be a duly licensed physician or (b) to one of his bonafide patients in the course of his professional practice.

Any article, instrument, substance, drug or thing designed, adapted or intended for preventing conception is not non-mailable under this section when mailed in the regular course of legitimate business by:

a. An importer to a manufacturer or wholesale dealer in drugs, or by a manufacturer or wholesale dealer in drugs to an importer;

b. A manufacturer to a wholesale dealer in drugs or by such wholesale dealer to a manufacturer;