Sexuality in nineteenth century America was still considered shameful to discuss in public, and the use of birth control was often taboo. Nonetheless, average American women like Violet Blair Janin and her husband Albert sought to gain control of their fertility. In correspondence between the couple who were married May 14, 1874, we learn of Violet’s gynecological problems. If she became pregnant, death was a very real possibility. After being informed by her homeopath that the current rhythm method she was using was not safe enough to guard her against pregnancy, Albert had no choice but to sacrifice sexual intimacy with his wife, or search for contraceptives on the black market. Andrea Tone explores the difficulties couples like Violet and Albert, as well as individuals, faced while attempting to seek control of their own childbearing, along with the rapidly booming business of underground birth control in her article “”Black Market Birth Control: Contraceptive Entrepreneurship in the Gilded Age.”” The need for a growing underground birth control marketplace came after Anthony Comstock, the chief agent of the New York Society of Suppression of Vice (NYSSV), pushed for a law which banned the “dissemination and distribution of contraceptives through the mail or across state lines.”1 Backed by the New York Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA), he was able to secure support for his bill, which passed on March 2, 1873. A background on Comstock is somewhat necessary to understand the underlying cause of his contentment toward contraception. A devout evangelical Christian, he believed that exposure to “sexual obscenities” such as birth control would “inevitably lead to moral decay, physical ruin, and spiritual damnation.”2 He neglected to consider or address the tremendous negative physical and mental effects multiple pregnancies may have on women and marriages. Nonetheless, after the rather quick passing of wh