United States v. One Package of Japanese Pessaries

"United States v. One Package of Japanese Pessaries", 86 F.2d 737 (2nd Cir. 1936) (often just "U.S. v. One Package"), was a United States court case involving birth control.

Background

In 1873 Congress adopted the Comstock Act, which prohibited the importation or mailing of "obscene matter". The law's definition of obscene matter included contraceptives or information about contraception. In the 1930s, Margaret Sanger and the National Committee for Federal Legislation on Birth Control lobbied Congress to revise this law, but were unsuccessful.

The case

Sanger ordered a new type of diaphragm (a pessary) from a Japanese physician to be shipped from Tokyo to the United States. Upon arrival in the United States the shipment was seized and confiscated under the Tariff Act of 1930, which had incorporated the anti-contraceptive provisions of the Comstock Act.

Initially, a lower court ruled against the government, but the government appealed to the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, which affirmed the lower court's ruling. The appellate court held that the law could not be used to intercept shipments which originated from a doctor. Judge Augustus Noble Hand wrote, in his decision, that it was illogical to accept that "...abortions, which destroy independent life, may be allowed in proper cases, and yet that no measures may be taken to prevent conception even though a likely result should be to require the termination of a pregnancy by means of an operation. It seems unreasonable to suppose that the national scheme of legislation involves such inconsistencies and requires the complete suppression of articles, the use of which in many cases is advocated by such a weight of authority in the medical world."