Mary Dennett

Mary Coffin Ware Dennett
Born	April 4, 1872(1872-04-04)
Died	July 25, 1947(1947-07-25) (aged 75)
Occupation	Activist

Mary Coffin Ware Dennett (April 4, 1872 – July 25, 1947) was an American birth control activist and pacifist. She formed the Voluntary Parenthood League and the group lobbied until 1926 for a bill that would exempt birth control information and materials from federal censorship laws.

In 1928 she was indicted under the Comstock law for distributing her pamphlet, The Sex Side of Life, which explained human reproduction to adolescents. H. L. Mencken observed the proceedings. He had briefly praised Mrs. Dennett’s book in the May 1926 issue of The American Mercury, ^[1] and took a sympathetic interest in her legal troubles: “There is, of course, nothing indecent in that pamphlet; on the contrary, it is notably prudent and clean. The author wrote it for the instruction of her own young sons, and its superiority to most other such literature was so apparent that it was reprinted at length in a medical journal, and circulated in great numbers by clergymen, Y.M.C.A. secretaries, social workers, and other such chemically pure persons. This went on for four and a half years. Then Mrs. Dennett, who is engaged in birth-control propaganda, began annoying the wowsers of the U.S. Post Office by exposing their gross stupidity and disingenuousness in the enforcement of the Comstock Act, and they retorted by barring her pamphlet from the mails. No plainer case of the use of an idiotic law to punish an inconvenient critic could be imagined.” ^[2] Eventually a safe jury was empanelled by the prosecution “and Mrs. Dennett was quickly convicted, and Judge Burrows fined her $300. . . . Six months later the Circuit Court of Appeals, consisting of [Thomas Walker?] Swan, Augustus N. Hand and Chase, JJ, set aside the verdict, decided that the pamphlet was so obviously ‘not’ obscene that ‘no case was made for submission to the jury,’ and ordered Mrs. Dennett released from her bond.” ^[3]

When Judge Augustus Noble Hand of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit overturned her conviction in 1930, the Court set a legal precedent that took intent into account in the evaluation of obscenity. Dennett's trial was part of a series of rulings that culminated in the 1936 ruling in United States v. One Package of Japanese Pessaries, which exempted birth control information and materials used by physicians from obscenity laws.

See also

• History of the birth control movement in the United States

Notes

1. ^ H. L. Mencken, “The Literature of Sex,” The American Mercury, v. 8, no. 29 (May 1926) 127.
2. ^ H.L. Mencken, “The Smut-Snufflers,” American Mercury, v. 20, no. 78 (June 1930) 253.
3. ^ H.L. Mencken, “The Smut-Snufflers,” American Mercury, v. 20, no. 78 (June 1930) 254.

References

• Rosen, R. L. Dennett, Mary Coffin Ware. American National Biography Online, Feb. 2000.
• "The sex side of life" : Mary Ware Dennett's pioneering battle for birth control and sex education By: Chen, Constance M, 1996. This is an academic book but very interesting, not only for Mary Dennett's life but also the early history of American women's struggle for voting and social rights.

External links

• Mary Ware Dennett Papers.
• Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute, Harvard University.
• The Sex Side of Life, ebook from manybooks.net

Persondata
Name	Dennett, Mary
Alternative names
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Date of birth	April 4, 1872
Place of birth
Date of death	July 25, 1947
Place of death