"By this law, policemen,--not the local police, but special
Government police, in plain clothes,--are employed to look after
all the poor women and girls in a town and its neighborhood. These
police spies have power to take up any woman they please, on
_suspicion_ that she is not a moral woman, and to register her
name on a shameful register as a prostitute. She is then forced to
submit to the horrible ordeal of a personal examination of a kind
which cannot be described here. It is an act on the part of the
Government doctor such as would be called an indecent or criminal
assault if any other man were to force it upon a woman. And it is
the _State_ which forces this indecent assault on the persons of
the helpless daughters of the poor.

"If a woman refuses to submit to it, she is punished by
imprisonment, with or without hard labor, _until_ she does submit.

"If, after she has endured this torture, she is found to be healthy
and well, she is set free, with a certificate that she is _fit
to practice prostitution_; but observe, she is never more a free
woman, for her name is on the register of Government prostitutes,
and she is strictly under the eye of the police, and is bound to
come up periodically,--it may be weekly or fortnightly,--to be
again outraged.

"If she is found to have signs of disease, she is sent to a
hospital, which is practically a prison, where she is kept as
long as the doctors please. She may be kept for weeks or months,
without any choice of her own. When cured, she is again set free
with her certificate. During the first years of this law, a
certificate on paper was given to every woman who had passed