Beginning in the 1870s, the so-called moral purity campaigner Anthony Comstock (1844-1915) and his fellow zealots of the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice pressured Congress to enact a series of anti-obscenity laws. The laws called for the banning of “smutty” literature, “indecent” plays, and “articles of immoral use” such as condoms, “womb veils” (diaphragms), and pessaries (rubber devices inserted into the uterus to prevent pregnancy). The laws particularly penalized mail distribution of forbidden articles including “every article or thing designed or intended for the prevention of conception or procuring of abortion” (1876 congressional statute, amended from the initial 1873 law). Many states put some version of this federal law on their books, and this class of legislation came to be known as the Comstock Laws.
In 1883 Funk & Wagnalls published Comstock’s Traps for the Young. The book is a diatribe against what Comstock saw as rampant immorality (see below). It sold well, and was published in several editions.
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Selected quotes from Traps for the Young:
Satan lays the snare, and children are his victims.”
“Our youth are in danger; mentally and morally they are cursed by a literature that is a disgrace to the nineteenth century. The spirit of evil environs them.”
“But worse than any cyclone or tornado is this silent influence [ads in newspapers], this breath of poison which is breaking over our youth, destroying the brightest intellects, crushing and wounding the most lovely forms, and grinding down its victims to the lowest depths of shame and degradation.”
“The most popular plays are those in which the greatest number of brazen-faced, abandoned young women can be got together to make a public exposure of their shame… Our youth become inflamed with lust. Breathing this atmosphere, they find the pure atmosphere of home intolerable. Often they go directly from these playhouses to the brothel, or if they return home it is to dream over the obscene and cursed spectacles they have witnessed.”
“There is no force at work in the community more insidious, more constant in its demands, or more powerful and far-reaching than lust. It is the constant companion of all other crimes. It is honeycombing society. Like a frightful monster it stands peering over the sleeping child to catch its first thoughts upon awakening.”
“I repeat, lust is the boon companion of all other crimes. There is no evil so extensive, none doing more to destroy the institutions of free America. It sets aside the laws of God and morality; marriage bonds are broken, most sacred ties severed, State laws ignored, and dens of infamy plant themselves in almost every community, and then reaching out like immense cuttlefish, draw in from all sides our youth to destruction.”
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Comstock was delighted that his anti-obscenity crusade gave him national visibility, and he portrayed anyone who objected as “liberals and infidels.” He fumed that liberals “zealous to be known as opposed to God and religion” used quotations from Comstock’s rants to provoke laughter when they held rallies against the Comstock Laws.
Comstock frequently boasted about his triumphs in getting newspapers to stop accepting ads for abortionists and abortifacient preparations. Other sources disagreed. The vehemently anti-abortion historian Marvin Olasky lamented that enforcement of the Comstock Laws was so lax that less than two years after passage of the 1873 law newspapers such as the New York Herald were flagrantly violating it. And Comstock himself admitted that many strong state laws against disseminating contraceptives and abortifacient preparations were not being enforced. He was furious that even when violators of the Comstock Laws were brought to trial, juries and judges were loathe to convict.
Comstock claimed that his seizures of obscene items would fill many boxcars. Among his confiscations he listed 4,185 “boxes of pills, powders, etc. used by abortionists.” When one considers how ubiquitous abortion providers were in the late 19th century and how many manufacturers of contraceptive and abortifacient preparations flourished in the U.S., Comstock’s haul was actually quite meager. No doubt his boxcars were mostly filled with other items he deemed obscene, such as half-dime novels, theatrical romances, and much of classical art and literature (“some of the most obscene and foulest matters [are] the natural outgrowth of corrupt minds of past ages”).
When I taught intro to gender studies, which included a lecture on the history of reproductive rights before Roe v. Wade, I would tell students about Comstockery. They were entertained by Comstock’s ravings, as students often are by the bizarre beliefs that in earlier times were considered mainstream. It didn’t occur to me then that there were probably numerous Comstock-type laws still on the books in various states; but it turns out that that is the case. Legislators in the red states are resuscitating previously moribund Comstock-era laws to add to their arsenal of weapons to attack women’s reproductive health rights.
George Bernard Shaw would be astounded that in the 21st century in much of the country America remains “a provincial place, a second-rate…civilization.”
Sources: Constance M. Chen, “The Sex Side of Life”: Mary Ware Dennett’s Pioneering Battle for Birth Control and Sex Education (New York: The New Press, 1996); Anthony Comstock, Traps for the Young (New York: Funk & Wagnalls, 1890, 3rd ed); Marvin Olasky, The Press and Abortion, 1838-1988 (Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum, 1988).