_"
This proposed amendment should without doubt include midwives as well
as nurses. There are thousands of women who never see a nurse or a
physician. Under this section, even as it now stands, physicians have
a right to prescribe contraceptives, but few of them have claimed that
right or have even known that it has existed. It does exist, however,
and was specifically declared by the New York State Court of Appeals,
as we shall see when we consider that court's opinion in the Sanger
case, farther on in the book. It can do no harm to make the intent of
the law as regards physicians plainer, and it would be an immense step
forward to include nurses and midwives in the section. With this
addition it would remove one of the most serious obstacles to the
freedom and advancement of American womanhood. Every woman interested
in the welfare of women in general should make it her business to
agitate for such a change in the obscenity laws.
The above provision would take care of the case of the woman who is
ill, or who is plainly about to become ill, but it does not take care
of the vast body of women who have not yet ruined their health by
childbearing and who are not yet suffering from diseases complicated
by pregnancy.
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