At the height of the Victorian era, concerns over women’s bodies and behavior—especially prostitution, nudity, and sexual reproduction—intensified. These fears coalesced in the 1870s into an anti-obscenity movement, spearheaded by the notorious censorship crusader, Anthony Comstock, along with physicians and reform groups like the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice.

They argued that controlling immorality would offset the threats that mounting poverty and crime—often attributed to the city’s influx of newcomers and immigrants—posed to New York’s social order. Anti-obscenity crusaders achieved success in the 1870s and 1880s, when New York State passed legislation criminalizing abortion and prohibiting the distribution of contraceptives and other “obscene” materials.

Many New Yorkers resisted Comstock’s anti-obscenity laws, among them free-love advocates, publishers, performers, activists, female doctors, and so-called “irregular” medical practitioners. They claimed Comstock’s censorship crusade had overreached and was endangering freedoms of expression, speech, and religion.

In the face of many efforts to challenge Comstockery in New York, the law remained intact until the early 20th century, when birth control advocates Margaret Sanger, Emma Goldman, and Mary Ware Dennett each fought regulations on the use and distribution of contraceptives. By 1930 their work had helped to add protections for women of all classes and backgrounds to control their fertility under the law.