Two Decades / A History of the First Twenty Years' Work of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union of the State of New York

by Frances W. Graham; Georgeanna M. Gardenier

The following protests were presented to the legislature, receiving such consideration that the subjects had no hearing:

AGAINST THE ENACTMENT OF A LAW LICENSING VICE.

To the Senate and Assembly of the State of New York:

WHEREAS, It has come to our knowledge that a bill providing for the regulation and licensing of vice in the cities and towns of the State of New York will be introduced in the legislature, and that one of the provisions of the bill is the compulsory medical examination of women who are inmates of the establishments named therein, we respectfully submit the following in relation to it:

It puts a premium on the social evil.

It makes this terrible vice a branch of municipal government, and the state a partner in it.

It inflicts the degradation of compulsory medical examination upon women, and lets their paramours go free.

It is an outrage upon womanhood, and means the practical slavery of an unfortunate class of women.

We realize all the shame of the bill, and feel its introduction in the legislature to be an insult to the great State of New York.