APPENDIX NO. 15
Freedom of Access to Knowledge of Their Own Choosing
Denied to Catholics by Oregon School Law, and
Seriously Threatened in Other States
Same Principle at Stake as That in Cummins-Vaile Bill
The following letter was sent by the Director of the Voluntary Parenthood League to every Catholic member of Congress. There are 37 Catholic members in the House, and 5 in the Senate.
January 16, 1925.
Dear Sir:
Am I correct in thinking that you are one of the thirty-seven Roman Catholic members of the House? If so, may I not assume both your special interest in the recently attempted anti-Catholic legislation in several States, and in the possibly anti-Catholic tendencies of certain proposed Federal measures, and your common concern with all liberty loving Americans at these new menaces to certain of our fundamental rights.
Among the proposals to which I refer are those made in Oregon, California, Washington, Michigan and Alabama to restrict Catholic teaching and learning. The laws proposed have not attempted directly to prohibit Catholic schools, but they indirectly achieve that end, by compelling all children of certain ages to attend public schools during all the hours of all the school days through out the year. What is perhaps the most preposterous of these attempts, actually became law in Oregon in 1922. Its provisions are incredible to upholders of a supposedly free government. They create a Prussian type of surveillance and control over all private instruction, and empower a County School Superintendent, vested with absolutely autocratic authority from which there is no appeal, to decide whether such private instruction as may be allowed is being “properly” conducted and to compel children receiving such private instruction as he may disapprove to attend the public school in the district of their residence. Fortunately, protest against this outrageous law from Catholics and other citizens, has taken the questions to the courts. Equally fortunately, the Federal District Court in Oregon has pronounced against the law’s constitutionality.
At Washington, it is the Sterling education bill at which lovers of our constitutional liberties, Catholics and non-Catholics alike, are looking askance as a possible gateway to Federal compulsion of public school attendance, or to other Federal interference with individual freedom in the acquisition of knowledge. In view of these legislative tendencies, then, and of the intolerant and lawless aggressiveness of certain groups which are violently anti-Catholic, and quite ready to translate their feelings into political control, may there not well be concern lest our guaranteed American freedom become a farce?
This is no time then for thoughtful Catholics to take sides against freedom. They need it to protect their own rights. Am I wrong in thinking that, on sober thought, they will not wish to line up against a bill that makes a stand for the very principle that is most dear to them, namely, their right to knowledge of their own choosing? It has been generally assumed that Catholic Representatives, as such, will vote against the Cummins-Vaile Bill, which touches inferentially upon “birth control”; but will they, can they, when they reflect that this measure only seeks to repeal the same kind of pernicious legislation as now imperils the civil liberties of all of us, but Catholics in particular, in the matter of their schools and religious instruction?
For these reasons I respectfully ask your judicial consideration of the above facts and those which follow, as they have a bearing on the decision to be made as to this bill by any Congressman who is at the same time a loyal Catholic and a conscientious legislator.
Neither the existing laws nor the provisions of the Cummins-Vaile Bill deal directly with the question of birth control. They have no right to do so. That is essentially a question for the individual conscience. But they do both affect the question indirectly. However, in so doing the laws have established tyranny, whereas the bill re-establishes individual freedom. The laws are an intrusion upon personal liberty, such as is prohibited by the constitution, and the bill simply removes that intrusion.
No Federal statutes forbid the actual control of conception. That is an entirely lawful act for the individual. But the laws do forbid the circulation by any public carrier, of any information as to how conception may be controlled. That is, they forbid the circulation of knowledge by restricting the freedom of the press, and even the freedom of individual communication by letter. Yet freedom of speech and press is constitutionally guaranteed.
Liberty to learn and to teach is a fundamental American right, which may not justly be infringed, except when the things taught are criminal acts. The control of conception is not a crime. It could not possibly be declared such, by law. It may be contrary to ethics, morality and religious teachings as claimed by the authorities of the Catholic Church, but so also it may not be. Opinion differs about it, though it is obvious that the trend of opinion, as proven by the birth rates the world over, is in its favor. However, it is a question apart from the law, and should be worked out in accord with personal conscience, and whatever educational and inspirational influence the individual wishes to accept.
So I earnestly ask you, Sir, to think this matter through, and to co-operate now with us who are working for enactment of this bill; so that freedom may be safeguarded for everyone, and each allowed to utilize it according to his own conscience. I do not ask you to believe in birth control. It would be utterly irrelevant and intrusive to do so. It is not the point of the bill. The point of the bill is one that all Americans should have in common, a love of freedom and insistence upon having it for all.
Will you stand for the Cummins-Vaile Bill on that one ground?
Yours respectfully,
Mary Ware Dennett,
Director.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] To give the name, would make this book “unmailable” under the law.
[2] Published by the Voluntary Parenthood League.
[3] The bill which Mrs. Sanger was then trying to have introduced did not remove the subject from the obscenities, except in the case of the doctor. For all others it still remained an indecency.
[4] The bill proposed did not allow self-government as to the control of conception, but only physician-government. The person applying could get instruction only if the doctor chose to give it, not otherwise.
[5] These States present a knotty legal question as to whether the repeal of the Federal prohibition relating to the mails will automatically make these State laws void. Legal opinion (as expressed by Attorneys Alfred Hayes and James F. Morton, Jr.) seems to agree that the Federal action will probably be effective, but there is authority for the assumption that under the State law police power might withhold such supposedly undesirable mail from the recipient.