Do you remember being young and as nervous as a chihuahua on a meth bender while buying condoms for the first time? Imagine it being in Massachusetts before 1972, when doing so could land your ass in prison. For real. If you weren’t married, buying contraceptives of any kind was against the law. Until nineteen-seventy-fucking-two. Jesus Christ. Speaking of which, followers of Jesus did have a lot to do with such laws.
--On This Day in History Shit Went Down: March 22, 1972--
In 1963, Bill Baird was working as the clinical director for a birth control manufacturer named EMKO. He was doing research at Harlem Hospital when an unmarried mother of nine staggered into the hallway in front of him. From the waist down she was covered in her own blood. The woman had attempted to give herself an abortion using a coat hanger. She died.
The experience was a transformative moment for Baird. He began giving away free samples of contraceptive foam at malls. Religious wingnuts hassled him. Police threatened to arrest him. He drove around in a delivery truck nicknamed the “Plan Van” giving away free birth control. He was arrested numerous times for distributing literature about contraception and abortion, because fuck his First Amendment rights. Feminists flocked to his defense.
In 1967 Baird gave a lecture at Boston University about birth control, once again giving away free contraceptives. He was arrested, charged with a felony, and convicted of “crimes against chastity.” Christ on a pile of contraceptive foam that is some draconian dumbfuckery.
So, he appealed, and that shit went all the way to the United States Supreme Court. It took five years from the time of his arrest, but on March 22, 1972, the court ruled 6–1 (two justices were not sworn in) that you didn’t actually have to be married to possess contraceptives. Chief Justice Warren Berger, a Nixon-appointed conservative who I expect never once found the clitoris, was the only dissenting vote.
The judgment was still kind of fucky, saying states retained the right to prohibit the rubbing of slippery bits outside of marriage, but they slid in some language that said the right to privacy means the government had no business intervening in the consensual no-pants dance between adults, regardless of marital status, and that did make it better.
The judgment became a foundation for Roe v. Wade the following year, as well as the gay rights victory of Lawrence v. Texas in 2003. Baird had two additional victories in the Supreme Court in 1976 and 1979, allowing for minors to have access to abortions without getting parental consent. He has often been referred to as the “father” of both abortion and contraceptive rights.
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I still don't get the "reasoning" behind claiming the State has any compelling reason to police people's sex lives.
The GOP claims to hate government overreach (unless they are doing it.) 🙄
I love this guy!