Robert Minor
“Your Honor, This Woman Gave Birth to a Naked Child.” published in The Masses, vol. 6, no. 12
New York: September 1915
Rare Book Division
Your Honor, This Woman Gave Birth to a Naked Child
Published monthly from 1911 to 1917, The Masses was a magazine of socialist ideology that reported on news, art, poetry, and fiction. Coming alive in the heart of Greenwich Village, The Masses brought together the socialist activists and artists of New York City, including John Sloan, Max Eastman, Dorothy Day, and Inez Haynes Gillmore. A free magazine run by volunteers, it was eventually shut down after going to trial for conspiring to obstruct conscription for World War I. The spirit of the magazine did not die with it, however, as the cooperative launched The Liberator (1918–1924) periodical and later New Masses (1926–1948).
This sketch highlights the impact obscenity laws had on women and their bodies, through the satirical stretch of circumstances where a baby’s naked body would be deemed obscene. Though clearly a parody, the sketch succeeds in sending its message, together with the adjacent article that discusses The Comstock Act of 1873, under which William Sanger, Margaret Sanger’s husband, was fined for distributing her 1914 birth-control pamphlet Family Limitation.
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