Back in the 1870s fundamentalist Anthony Comstock mounted a one-man campaign against all things sexual. The resulting Comstock Laws were so radical that shop owners were arrested for displaying naked mannequins in their windows and any information about birth control was banned from the mail.
Many women knew little about personal hygiene and were destined for subservient roles, multiple pregnancies or $5 back-street butcher-shop abortions.
The indomitable birth-control pioneer Margaret Sanger went after the Comstock Laws in an editorial. In part, she wrote:
“Women should look the whole world in the face with a go-to-hell look in the eyes. to have an ideal, to speak and act in defiance of convention.”
Oh, and title pun intended.
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The Comstock Laws--Frodo had not read those words in many years. He has tried hard to forget when America had laws like Saudi Arabia. He wishes America had fewer people like that, even now. No pun intended.
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