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United States v. One Package of Japanese Pessaries

American birth control legal case in 1936

Summary

American birth control legal case in 1936

Field	Value
Litigants	United States v. One Package of Japanese Pessaries
Court	United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit
CourtSeal	Seal of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.svg
DecideDate
FullName	United States of America v. One Package of Japanese Pessaries
Citations	86 F.2d 737 (2d Cir. 1936)
Prior	Appeal from order dismissing case, S.D.N.Y. (13 F. Supp. 334)
Holding	Comstock Act could not bar shipment of contraceptives made by the order of a licensed medical doctor. S.D.N.Y. affirmed.
Judges	L. Hand, A. N. Hand, Swan
Majority	A. N. Hand
JoinMajority	unanimous court

United States v. One Package of Japanese Pessaries, 86 F.2d 737 (2d Cir. 1936) (often just U.S. v. One Package), was an in rem United States Court of Appeals case in the Second Circuit involving birth control.

Background

In 1873 Congress adopted the Comstock Act, which prohibited the importation or mailing of "obscene matter". The law's definition of obscene matter included contraceptives or information about contraception. In the 1930s, Margaret Sanger and the National Committee on Federal Legislation for Birth Control lobbied Congress to revise this law, but were unsuccessful.

The case

Dr. Hannah Stone, at one of Sanger's clinics, ordered a new type of diaphragm (a pessary) from a Japanese physician to be shipped from Tokyo to the United States. Upon arrival in the United States the shipment was seized and confiscated under the Tariff Act of 1930, which had incorporated the anti-contraceptive provisions of the Comstock Act.

A lower court ruled against the government. When the government appealed to the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, the appellate court affirmed the lower court's ruling. The appellate court held that the law could not be used to intercept shipments which originated from a doctor. Judge Augustus Noble Hand wrote, in his decision:

References

Ph.D., Aharon W. Zorea. (2012-01-16). "Birth Control". ABC-CLIO.
McCann, Carole R.. (1999). "Birth Control Politics in the United States, 1916-1945". Cornell University Press.
86 F. 2d. at 739-40.

Wikipedia Source

This article was imported from Wikipedia and is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Content has been adapted to SurfDoc format. Original contributors can be found on the article history page.

birth-control-case-law united-states-court-of-appeals-for-the-second-circuit-cases united-states-reproductive-rights-case-law united-states-civil-forfeiture-case-law 1936-in-united-states-case-law birth-control-in-the-united-states united-states-in-rem-cases barrier-contraception japan–united-states-relations

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