In 1873, the late Anthony Comstock, who with a list of contributors,
most of whom did not realize the real effects of his work, constituted
the so-called Society for the Suppression of Vice, succeeded in
obtaining the passage of the federal obscenity act. This act was
presented as one to prevent the circulation of pornographic literature
and pictures among school children. As such, it was rushed through
with two hundred sixty other acts in the closing hours of the
Congress. This act made it a crime to use the mails to convey
contraceptives or information concerning contraceptives. Other acts
later made the original law applicable to express companies and other
common carriers, as well as to the mails.
With this precedent established--a precedent which a majority of the
congressmen could hardly have understood because of the hasty passage
of the act--Comstock secured the enactment of state laws to the same
effect. Meanwhile, the provisions regarding contraceptives had been
dropped from the amended New York State law of 1872. In 1873, however,
a new section, said to have been drafted by Comstock himself, was
substituted for the one enacted in 1872, and that section is
essentially the substance of the present law.
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