Birth control laws : shall we keep them, change them, or abolish them / by Mary Ware Dennett.

  • Dennett, Mary Ware, 1872-1947.
Date:
1926
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Birth control laws : shall we keep them, change them, or abolish them / by Mary Ware Dennett. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    take, or cause the same to be taken, from the mails for the purpose of circulating or disposing thereof, or of aiding in the circulation or disposition thereof, shall be fined not more than five thousand dol¬ lars, or imprisoned not more than five years, or both.” Now as to the State laws. They are very similar in irnpoit and phraseology to the parent Federal law, Section 211,. but they deal with other ways of circulating contra¬ ceptive knowledge and means than transportation by mail or express. The 24 States which have specific prohibitions, variously forbid publishing, advertising or giving the infor¬ mation. Fourteen States prohibit any one to tell. (Fancy trying to enforce such a law!) In most of these States the statute is similar to that in the District of Columbia, which even forbids the telling of anything that “will be calculated to lead another” to apply any information to the prevention of conception, and also makes it a crime to have in one’s possession any instructions to lend or give away. That is, the most ordinary channels for human relationship,—pri¬ vate conversation and the sort of help one friend or rela¬ tive naturally gives to another,—become criminal where this subject is concerned. In several States private prop¬ erty and personal belongings can be searched by the authori¬ ties for “contraband” instructions. Colorado forbids any¬ one to bring contraceptive knowledge into the State. (The hold-up of traffic on the State line if that law were enforced, would be amazing to contemplate.) But Connecticut surely deserves the booby prize, for it has the grotesque distinc¬ tion of being the one State to penalize the actual utilization of contraceptive information; in other words, the Connecti¬ cut law makes it a crime not only to find out how, but actually to control conception. The enforcement of that law fairly staggers the. imagination. What could have been in the minds of the legislators who passed it is a question. New York has a unique sort of post-script to its State law, passed in 1881, eight years after the first law. The