... access to birth control (contraceptives)
Margaret Sanger was arrested in 1916 for opening the country's first birth control clinic (in Brooklyn, NY). She also had been in violation of existing laws by publishing and distributing <em>The Woman Rebel </em>newsletter, which discussed contraception. The laws in question were called "The Comstock Laws," on the books since 1873. The first of such Comstock Laws was the 1873 federal act for the "Suppression of Trade in, and Circulation of, Obscene Literature and Articles of Immoral Use," which made it illegal to distribute materials regarding contraception (and other sex-related topics) by US mail. .Anthony Comstock was a US Postal Inspector who had been behind the push for such laws.
Sanger appealed her conviction under the Comstock Laws. In 1918, Judge Frederick Crane of the New York Court of Appeals upheld Sanger's conviction. But in his ruling, he also issued a revised interpretation of New York's state law, saying that physicians could legally prescribe contraception for general health reasons, not just for prevention of the spread of venereal disease. It was a court ruling that allowed allowed women in general at least some access to contraception, and was the beginning of the success of the birth control movement that Sanger championed.
