ABSTRACT
The charge of puritanism has guaranteed the accuser the prestige of being on the side of progress, free speech, and sexual emancipation. To utter this epithet has been to announce and celebrate one's own receptivity to advanced art and unorthodox "lifestyles"; it has been the preeminent sign of one's capacity for regarding all aspects of the human condition without flinching or passing judgment. Puritanism was another name for the general state of ignorance about reproduction. Appalled by the miserable conditions of huge families and by the desperation and ruined health of women forced into a life of perpetual childbearing, outspoken reformers like Margaret Sanger and Emma Goldman tirelessly assailed the Comstock Act. Critics held puritanism responsible for devising an impossibly strict moral code which required absolute abstinence before marriage, lifelong abstinence for all who did not marry, and sexual relations exclusively in the service of procreation within marriage.
