2 December—It’s hard to believe, but until 1965 it was illegal to buy and use contraceptives in Connecticut. The Comstock Laws of 1873 were a set of federal acts of Congress fortified by related legislation in the various states that criminalized the use of the mails to send obscenity, contraceptives, abortifacients, sex toys, personal letters with any sexual content or information, or any information regarding those items. Really!

Connecticut’s Comstock law specifically prohibited the use of “any drug, medicinal article, or instrument for the purpose of preventing conception.” Absolutely ridiculous. And by the fifties only Connecticut and Massachusetts had the outlandish legislation on the books, even though the laws were seldom enforced.

But in 1965, in Griswold v. Connecticut, the United States Supreme Court ruled that the Constitution protects the liberty of married couples to buy and use contraceptives without government restriction. Griswold was Estelle Griswold, head of Planned Parenthood of Connecticut.

SCOTUS held, with two justices dissenting, that the statute was unconstitutional, having “the clear effect of [denying] disadvantaged citizens . . . access to medical assistance and up-to-date information in respect to proper methods of birth control.” The dissenters were former KKK member and FDR appointee Hugo Black, who found the law “offensive” but constitutional; and Potter Stewart, moderate Republican (and Hotchkiss and Yale alumnus) appointed by Ike, who opined that the law was “uncommonly silly” but constitutionally valid.

While the Constitution doesn’t explicitly mention a right to privacy, William O. Douglas, writing for the majority, asked, “Would we allow the police to search the sacred precincts of marital bedrooms for telltale signs of the use of contraceptives? The very idea is repulsive to the notions of privacy surrounding the marriage relationship.” Arthur Goldberg concurred, citing the Ninth Amendment—“The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.”

And Byron White and John Marshall Harlan II concurred, citing the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment—“No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”

Before Griswold, SCOTUS hadn’t done much with the right to privacy, but that decision essentially paved the way to Roe v. Wade, in which the Supremes ruled, with Byron White and William Rehnquist dissenting, that a woman’s right to privacy extended to the fetus or unborn child she was carrying . . .