In 1932, Margaret Sanger arranged for a shipment of diaphragms to be mailed from Japan to a sympathetic doctor in New York City. When U.S. customs confiscated the package as illegal contraceptive devices, Sanger helped file a lawsuit. In 1936, a federal appeals court ruled in United States v. One Package of Japanese Pessaries that the federal government could not interfere with doctors providing contraception to their patients. In 1938, over three hundred birth control clinics opened in America, supplying reproductive care (including condoms) to poor women all over the country. Programs led by U.S. Surgeon General Thoman Parran included heavy promotion of condoms. These programs are credited with a steep drop in the U.S. STD rate by 1940.
when did condoms become legal in the us
1936