Comstock Laws

Let's get this term into the national conversation: Comstock Laws.

Although I truly believe conservatives are using contraceptive interference as a red herring to draw away attention from the REAL issue of the economy, damage is still occuring and we need to address it sooner rather than later. Realize that the Supreme Court will likely [eventually] overturn all this nonsense -- consider what we are experiencing as a resurgence of the Comstock Laws. Read. Remind yourself what you learned in history class.

"Since the middle of the nineteenth century a movement of middle-class men, led by doctors, but also including such prominent political figures as Theodore Roosevelt, had sought to inhibit what they believed to be an immoral trend among white, middle-class women to restrict childbearing. Warning of "race suicide," by which they meant the extinction of White-Anglo-Saxon-Protestants, these crusaders fought to ban contraception and abortion. By 1900 doctors and their sympathizers had persuaded Congress to outlaw the dissemination of birth control information through the mails; many states restricted the sale or advertising of contraceptive devices; and the Society for the Suppression of Vice, headed by Anthony Comstock was waging a campaign to enforce these laws. Moreover, every state in the country banned abortion except to save the life of a mother." From http://www.victoriaspast.com/LifeofVictorianWoman/LifeofVictorianWoman.html

Sound familiar?