Connecticut’s 99-year struggle for lawful contraception – Part I of IV

#MiddleburyCT #Contraception #BirthControl

This article was originally published in the September 2022 issue of the Middlebury Bee-Intelligencer.

By DR. ROBERT L. RAFFORD

Allopathic doctor Marcus DeForest Jr.’s gravestone sits in the Middlebury Cemetery. DeForest, who served as Middlebury’s representative in the Connecticut General Assembly, supported bills banning birth control in Connecticut. (Public domain photo)

In 1879, Middlebury citizens joined the rest of Connecticut in voting to prohibit birth control for every citizen of the state. Middlebury’s representative in the Connecticut General Assembly, Dr. Marcus DeForest Jr. (1826-1891), was a farmer, allopathic physician and surgeon, and served our town in the Connecticut Legislature in 1879 and 1880. When Senator Carlos Smith (1834-1911) of New Haven submitted Bill 43 entitled “An Act to Amend an Act Concerning Offenses against Decency, Morality and Humanity,” a measure designed to curtail sending “obscene” items through the United States mail, the Hartford Courant reported Dr. DeForest praised the measure, alluding to “the enormity of the offenses committed through the license now exercised to manufacture and sell some of the articles reached by this bill.”

The foremost advocate for the 1879 bill was Rep. Phineas T. Barnum (1810-1891) of Bridgeport, the American showman, businessman and politician. He was the chairman of the important Temperance Committee in the House that approved the bill. Anti-obscenity laws already existed in Connecticut, but the purpose of this legislation was to clarify the original statute and to add an anti-contraceptive amendment, which Barnum did. A similar bill was passed in Massachusetts about the same time.

Of the 38 states in the Union in 1879, about 24, including Connecticut and Massachusetts, passed comparable statutes echoing a federal law, the Comstock Act of 1873. These state laws, called “little Comstock laws,” were like the federal statute passed by Congress and signed by President Ulysses S. Grant. The laws all became interpreted to prohibit the dissemination of contraceptive information and devices, including by doctors, but Connecticut’s law was the most restrictive of all, where the act of even using birth control became prohibited by law.

Anthony Comstock (1844-1915) was born in New Canaan, Fairfield County, Connecticut; he grew up a Congregationalist, and his contemporary, P. T. Barnum, was a Universalist. In 1872 Comstock became the chief special agent of the YMCA-backed Committee for the Suppression of Vice, and somehow was appointed as a United States Postal Inspector. He lobbied legislators in Washington, which resulted in the legislation which bears his name.

Comstock used his position for 43 years to track down (some might say “persecute”) and arrest perceived violators, and his extreme practices earned the epithet “Comstockery.” Apparently, the original draft did not include, and Comstock did not want, a prohibition of doctors prescribing contraception. However, U.S. Senator and former governor of Connecticut William Alfred Buckingham (1804-1875) had that provision inserted into the new law.

Connecticut’s 1879 law provided penalties for “the sale of obscene literature, and the manufacture and sale of indecent instruments, illegal drugs and medicines,” according to The Hartford Courant, and provided this punishment: “Every person who shall use any drug, medicinal article or instrument, for the purpose of preventing conception, shall be fined not less than $50, or imprisoned not less than sixty days nor more than one year or both.”

The Comstock and Barnum laws had far-reaching consequences, affecting the lives of women and their families in Connecticut and elsewhere for the next 99 years. They forbade the use of any article for contraception, even among married couples under any circumstances. Married couples could be arrested and imprisoned for using contraceptive devices, and doctors and nurses could face imprisonment, loss of licenses and fines for participating in offering this health care to anyone, regardless of medical need or other circumstances.

Six months after P.T. Barnum’s bill was enacted, Margaret Louise Higgins was born in Corning, New York on September 14, 1879. Her mother, Anne Higgins, conceived 18 times and gave birth to 11 children before dying at age 49. Margaret became a nurse, and in 1903 was married to William Sanger. Her notoriety began in 1914, when Sanger’s life became dedicated to addressing the extreme restrictions of the 1873 and 1879 laws, and from then on she worked tirelessly to provide information to women, especially poor women, about their bodies and how to take control of their sexual and reproductive lives. Her pleas were answered by many throughout the country, especially here in Middlebury.

You are urged to join the Middlebury Historical Society by going online at MiddleburyHistoricalSociety.org or visiting them on Facebook. Questions about membership can be sent to Bob at robraff@comcast.net.