We all learned about Prohibition, when alcohol was illegal, but people drank it anyway because to many, it was a necessary part of life. Less well-known, but following the same logic, earlier laws against birth control were flouted regularly. In America, the Comstock laws went into effect in 1873, banning the trade in “obscene materials” which included not only pornography, but also birth control, abortifacients, and any information about them. But all that did was drive such information underground. Birth control methods of the time weren’t nearly as effective as they are today, but they were something. Women talked about them over the back fence or in their parlors, to avoid any written materials that might lead to arrest. But they were also available for sale to those who knew how to decode language designed to toe the letter of the law.
Listen beautiful relax classics on our Youtube channel.
Every day, across the nation, ads for abortion and birth control appeared in newspapers. Readers just had to know what to look for. “Women had to get creative” about how to get that information out, said Rendina. It was “restoring the menses,” not an abortion. It was “getting rid of a blockage,” or “cleansing the uterus. They came up with all these ridiculous euphemisms.”
A perusal of newspapers from this period shows advertisements for “Mother’s helper” or “Portuguese female pills,” medicine for those “laboring under the suppression of their natural illness,” “renovating pills from Germany” and the like.
Read about the whisper network in which women passed along such information when it was illegal at Atlas Obscura.
Source: neatorama