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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    cian has ever been prosecuted under these laws. ... A reputable doctor may tell his patient in his office what is necessary, and a druggist may sell on a doctor’s written prescription drugs which he would not be allowed to sell otherwise.” This is a baffling sort of mind to deal with. For either he did not fully realize the meaning of the laws which he himself framed, or else he hopelessly confused the actual wording of the laws with his personal choices as to the people to whom they should apply. For the Federal law as enacted by Congress and as it stands to this day contains no exemptions or qualifications whatever, as to the giving of contraceptive information. It is just as criminal for a conscientious doctor to send needed contraceptive instruc¬ tions to a patient, as for a sex pervert to send an advertise¬ ment of contraceptive means with his depraved literature. And in the District of Columbia and in at least seventeen States it is just as criminal for a reputable doctor to instruct a patient, even verbally in the privacy of his own office, as it is for any low-minded person to peddle pornographic stuff containing contraceptive directions. The language of these laws is perfectly plain; they are flat, sweeping prohibitions and apply to everybody alike. It would seem almost in¬ credible that Comstock should have dared to assert that they did not forbid physicians, or to assume that because neither he nor the government officials chose to enforce the laws on all offenders, that the laws, therefore did not apply to all offenders. But perhaps his mind was so focussed on the fact that he had not himself prosecuted any physicians whom he considered reputable, that he assumed the impos¬ sibility of their being prosecuted by any one. However, it seem doubtful that he was quite so oblivious as to the plain import of the law’s words, as to sincerely think they did not mean what they said. It seems more likely that in planning laws as he did with their sweeping