American birth control activist Margaret Sanger fled to Europe in 1914 to escape prosecution under the Comstock laws, which prohibited sending contraceptive devices, or information about contraception, through the mail. Sanger learned about the diaphragm in the Netherlands and introduced the product to the United States when she returned in 1916. Sanger and her second husband, Noah Slee, illegally imported large quantities of the devices from Germany and the Netherlands. In 1925, Slee provided funding to Sanger's friend Herbert Simonds, who used the funds to found the first diaphragm manufacturing company in the U.S., the Holland-Rantos Company.