None of these acts made
it an offense to prevent conception--all of them provided punishment
for anyone disseminating information concerning the prevention of
conception. In the federal statutes, the maximum penalties were fixed
at a fine of $5,000 or five years imprisonment, or both. The usual
maximum penalty under a state law is a fine of $1,000 or one year's
imprisonment, or both.
Comstock has passed out of public notice. His body has been entombed
but the evil that he did lives after him. His dead hand still reaches
forth to keep the subject of prevention of conception where he placed
it--in the same legal category with things unclean and vile. Forty
years ago the laws were changed and the chief work of Comstock's life
accomplished. Those laws still live, legal monuments to ignorance and
to oppression. Through those laws reaches the dead hand to bring to
the operating table each year hundreds of thousands of women who
undergo the agony of abortion. Each year this hand reaches out to
compel the birth of hundreds of thousands of infants who must die
before they are twelve months old.
Like many laws upon our statute books, these are being persistently
and intelligently violated.
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