The 1873 Comstock Act defined birth control as obscene and made it a Federal offence to send contraceptive devices or references to it through the mail.
Sanger was indicted for “depositing non-mailable matter for mailing and delivery.” But times had changed, and the public pressured the Government to drop the charges. Sanger lived to see her battle vindicated. In 1965, when Sanger was 81, the Supreme Court ruled in Griswold v. Connecticut that laws banning contraceptive use violated the right to privacy.