![\"foote\"](\"http:\/\/blogs.harvard.edu\/preserving\/files\/2016\/05\/foote.jpg\")
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
The\u00a0Comstock Act of 1873 inhibited publication, frank discussion, and dissenting attitudes toward sexuality, religion, marriage. One of its most outspoken adversaries was the physician and freethinker, Dr. Edward Bliss Foote, who\u00a0challenged all obscenity legislation in Congress, state legislatures, and courts and also offered support to defendants in free speech cases. He\u00a0campaigned against obscenity prosecutions, promoted free speech and became an early and\u00a0ardent proponent\u00a0of woman’s rights to birth control information. Foote\u00a0is considered the most important writer on contraception in the 19th century. He was a lifelong promoter and supporter of woman’s suffrage, even giving Susan B. Anthony $25 toward her $100 fine for voting in the 1872 election. Comstock went after his\u00a0nemesis in 1874, charging Foote with violating postal laws for mailing an educational pamphlet giving guidance on how to\u00a0limit the size of\u00a0families through “contraceptics”. \u00a0He was convicted, heavily fined, and forced to remove “obscene” content from his books and pamphlets.<\/p>\n
In 1878, Foote responded by\u00a0establishing the\u00a0National Defense Association, along with members from the National Liberal League, aimed at repealing\u00a0the Comstock laws, and supporting\u00a0victims of the\u00a0Comstock persecutions.\u00a0In 1879, Foote\u00a0published a pamphlet entitled “A fable of the spider and the bees” In his fable, he creates a metaphor for the destructive nature of the Comstock Laws. In the story, a\u00a0venomous spider casts a web over the insect community, keeping moths out of the garden paradise but trapping butterflies, which were important for pollination. The bumblebee lawmakers ignore\u00a0complaints from the garden’s weaker residents about the harsh methods used by the spider, which bore the letters A and C (i.e. Anthony Comstock). After the fable, Foote provides some\u00a0notable cases where free speech has been stifled, including his own story, “free-love” advocate Ezra Heywood, and educator\/reformer\/physician Dr. Sara Chase. Edward Bond Foote, followed his\u00a0father\u2019s footsteps and wrote his own pamphlet on\u00a0contraceptive information, The Radical Remedy in Social Science; or, Borning Better Babies through Regulating Reproduction by Controlling Conception.<\/em><\/p>\n In Foote’s\u00a0publication, he calls upon the press and the public to stand up censorship:<\/p>\n “Although the Press has been timid and timeserving in its treatment of Comstock and his ignorant censorship, we have enough material at hand to fill more than one hundred pages with the indignant utterances of newspaper writers who have been appalled at the injustice inflicted under the laws instigated and used by Comstock. We will only spare room for a few extracts, enough to show that the Press is not dead but sleepeth.” Foote<\/p>\n “Our Banner is unfurled with the motto \u2014\u201cDown with Comstockism\u201d\u2014the enemy of a free Republic \u2014and we invite all Christian people of every denomination, and good people of every belief or unbelief who have the good of the human family at heart, to rally under it. There is no sectarianism in our creed, and only one final object in view. ” –Foote<\/p>\n
![\"foote](\"http:\/\/blogs.harvard.edu\/preserving\/files\/2016\/05\/foote-2.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\n![\"foote](\"http:\/\/blogs.harvard.edu\/preserving\/files\/2016\/05\/foote-3.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\n