The Unfinished Fight Over Contraception
By LOUISE G. TRUBEK
NYT
CAN we still be arguing about a woman’s ability to control her own fertility? Almost 50 years ago in Griswold v. Connecticut, the Supreme Court struck down state restrictions on contraception because they violated a right to privacy. But the issue has not gone away. Rick Santorum injected it into the presidential race by indicating that Griswold should be overturned so that states could ban contraception altogether. And the Senate just voted down a Republican effort to allow employers and health insurance companies to refuse coverage for contraceptives if they had moral or religious objections.
Why are issues that the courts decided so long ago still unresolved? Maybe it is time to recognize that law alone is not enough to effect social change. It must be linked to social activism on behalf of women’s rights.
I should know. Fifty-five years ago, I had an opportunity to take a stand in favor of the right of women to control their fertility — and I did so through the courts.
It was 1957, and fresh out of the University of Wisconsin I enrolled in the Yale Law School — one of only six women in my graduating class. In my second year at Yale, several of our professors asked my husband and me to join a lawsuit challenging Connecticut’s birth-control law, which outlawed the sale and use of contraceptive materials and prohibited a doctor from prescribing birth control even to married women. One goal of the lawsuit was to remove the statutory obstacle to opening Planned Parenthood clinics in Connecticut so that poor families could have access to family-planning services.
(More here.)
NYT
CAN we still be arguing about a woman’s ability to control her own fertility? Almost 50 years ago in Griswold v. Connecticut, the Supreme Court struck down state restrictions on contraception because they violated a right to privacy. But the issue has not gone away. Rick Santorum injected it into the presidential race by indicating that Griswold should be overturned so that states could ban contraception altogether. And the Senate just voted down a Republican effort to allow employers and health insurance companies to refuse coverage for contraceptives if they had moral or religious objections.
Why are issues that the courts decided so long ago still unresolved? Maybe it is time to recognize that law alone is not enough to effect social change. It must be linked to social activism on behalf of women’s rights.
I should know. Fifty-five years ago, I had an opportunity to take a stand in favor of the right of women to control their fertility — and I did so through the courts.
It was 1957, and fresh out of the University of Wisconsin I enrolled in the Yale Law School — one of only six women in my graduating class. In my second year at Yale, several of our professors asked my husband and me to join a lawsuit challenging Connecticut’s birth-control law, which outlawed the sale and use of contraceptive materials and prohibited a doctor from prescribing birth control even to married women. One goal of the lawsuit was to remove the statutory obstacle to opening Planned Parenthood clinics in Connecticut so that poor families could have access to family-planning services.
(More here.)
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1 Comments:
Earth to Louise - I have no problem with your desire to use contraceptives. I would like to know why you believe you have the right to demand that I pay for your contraceptives. Could you march over to your neighbors, who may or may not use contraceptives, and demand that they pay for yours? Why is it OK for the government to do the same?
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