United States v. One Package

This decision allowed contraceptive devices to be imported into the United States, paving the way for the 1937 decision of the American Medical Association that birth control was a medical service that could be taught in schools of medicine.

Anti-obscenity laws became popular in the states after the Civil War. So censorious was public opinion that in 1869 Harriet Beecher Stowe endured widespread criticism for mentioning Lord Byron's incestuous activities with his sister in the Atlantic Monthly. In 1873, Congress passed the federal Comstock Act, which made criminal the mailing or advertising of "obscene" materials--including literature on birth control.