Ambit:
the range or limits of the influence of something:
They believe that all the outstanding issues should fall within the ambit of the talks. [Cambridge Dictionary]
Noted in “The Long Fight For The Freedom To Blaspheme Has Lessons For Today,” Robyn E. Blumner, Free Inquiry (Vol. 39, Number 3):
Comstock also went after freethinkers: people who were calling religion and its rules for private behavior into question. He thought freethinkers, who often held the view that women should be free to control their sexual reproduction in bold defiance of church doctrine, equally immoral as those producing smut. Freethinkers were prosecuted under obscenity law, but the crime was essentially that of impinging on Comstock’s religious sensibilities. And at that time, the crime of obscenity subsumed blasphemy within its ambit.
