According to Connecticut law, anyone who used a drug or instrument to prevent conception could be fined or imprisoned a minimum of sixty days or both. This meant a married couple could go to jail for using a condom. Furthermore, anyone who so much as assisted another in the use of birth control could be punished as an accessory to a crime. Estelle Griswold thought the ban on contraception in Connecticut was not only a serious invasion of privacy but an example of ridiculously antiquated thinking. Connecticut had one of the lowest birthrates in the nation, evidence that Protestants and Catholics alike were flouting the law. As one observer wrote, "One would assume that the good citizens of the state, regardless of religious persuasion, are heeding the law about as casually as the American public did the Volstead Act [banning liquor] in the roaring 20's." Even Catholic priests were beginning to realize that their flock were straying from the official rules of the Church.

At first Griswold and Planned Parenthood's lawyers simply filed lawsuits on behalf of individual married women who would suffer major health problems if they ever gave birth again. But Griswold was hampered by a lack of money and a lack of organized support. Since it was strictly illegal for Planned Parenthood to open up a clinic in Connecticut itself, Griswold organized trips across the border to New York State. Yet even such trips were technically illegal because they involved aiding and abetting in a crime. In 1960, the Supreme Court upheld Connecticut's 1879 anti-contraception law. But Griswold would not give up. She grew steadily more defiant. On November 1, 1961, she opened an illegal birth control clinic in New Haven, staffed with volunteer doctors. A few patients visited the clinic, including an undercover vice officer. Four days later, police arrived to shut down the clinic and charge Griswold with a criminal offense. She was delighted. Now she had a strong case to test the law's legitimacy.

Despite Griswold's respectable image, judge after judge ruled against her. Her case wound its way through the courts, climbing the judicial hierarchy all the way to the top. In the meantime, Americans were becoming increasingly concerned about the effects of ignorance on society, a fact exemplified in 1958 by the opening of the play Blue Denim, by James Leo Herlihy and William Noble, which told the story of a young man who, afraid to talk to his parents about birth control, gets his girlfriend pregnant. Sexual shame and secrecy, the play insisted, could lead to devastating social consequences. The play, warmly praised by Eleanor Roosevelt in her national newspaper column, reflected the growing public demand for open discussion about sexual issues.

In 1965, the Supreme Court agreed to hear Griswold's plea. At first, the nine justices were divided. Even in the age of Carol Doda and the Rolling Stones ("Satisfaction," a song with sexual overtones, was number one on the charts in 1965), several of the high court judges believed the state of Connecticut had the right to send Griswold to jail for distributing contraception. But on June 7, the court issued a 7-2 decision striking down once and for all Connecticut's ban on contraception. In the majority opinion, William O. Douglas declared that the First Amendment created "a penumbra where privacy is protected from governmental intrusion." Douglas deplored the thought of police officers searching "the sacred precincts of marital bedrooms" and noted that certain rights of privacy were older than the Bill of Rights itself. Both of the judges who wrote dissents in the case agreed that the Connecticut law was illogical and backward, but neither felt the Supreme Court had any right to interfere with the legislation of sexual morality. It was a solid victory for Estelle Griswold and Planned Parenthood and the forces of sexual freedom, though the court's decision in Griswold v. Connecticut did nothing to overturn laws in Massachusetts, New York, and other states prohibiting the sale and display of contraceptives. Griswold only voided laws against their use.

In the fall of '65, just a few months after the Griswold decision, another birth control controversy made headlines. This time, many thought the matter was more serious. National newspapers and magazines picked up a story in the Brown University student newspaper revealing that the campus physician had prescribed birth control pills to two female students, both of whom were unmarried. It was hardly news that college students were having sex, but many were shocked that university administrators were now condoning the practice. In fact, physicians at the University of Chicago and the University of Minnesota had been prescribing the pill to students for some time. But officials at Harvard and other schools publicly deplored the practice and warned that it would have negative consequences. Most physicians in 1965 tended to frown on premarital sex, and school doctors were especially conservative on the subject. "A visit to the infirmary is indeed the best form of birth control," wrote a student at American University to the school newspaper. "The staff has the ability to turn any liberal-minded co-ed into a Victorian prude." The head of AU's health service, James W. Egan, shot back an angry reply, stating that the health service "could not of course prescribe contraceptives for minors without parental permission without serious legal risk." But his concerns were not just legal. "Aside from these considerations, a physician must practice in accord with the dictates of his own conscience and I don't think that putting the stamp of approval on promiscuity by issuing oral contraceptives would be in accord with the standards of the physicians practicing at American University." Egan warned "those adventuresome students who have suffered a complete necrosis of their moral standards" that venereal disease was on the rise.

The pill was particularly in demand on college campuses. College physicians were loath to fit female students with the diaphragm - mainly because the procedure forced the physician to feel personally complicit in the promotion of premarital sex. But the pill let college physicians (almost all of whom were male) avoid penetrating the vagina of a young virgin with his fingers. As historian Beth Bailey writes, "The pill was a wonder drug not simply because of its effectiveness for women, but because of its convenience for those who prescribed it."

Though traditionalists were determined to put up a good fight, the pill gave modernists a decided advantage in the shaping of American society. In some sense, however, the battle lines were blurred. Who was really a liberal and who was a conservative? Support for birth control was strongest in the South, traditionally the most conservative region of the country. Was it because Southern whites were genuinely concerned about the welfare of the poor? Or were they motivated by racism and eager to halt the growth of the black population? Some blacks suspected the latter. They saw dangerous parallels between birth control and involuntary sterilization, a technique favored by German Nazis and American eugenicists. The more social workers tried to bring birth control to poor black neighborhoods, the more left-wing activists fought their efforts. Although Martin Luther King, Jr., was a strong advocate for family planning, even the liberal National Association for the Advancement of Colored People distrusted birth control. In fact, in September 1965 the NAACP opposed a $91,000 federal grant for the dissemination of birth control information in North Philadelphia. The NAACP charged Planned Parenthood, which had applied for the grant, with attempting to "help Negroes commit racial suicide." Although many blacks believed the pill was a benevolent technological advance, black nationalists tended to regard it as a symbol of genocide. A Planned Parenthood official explained to Ebony magazine: "Many Negro women have told our workers, ?There are two kinds of pills - one for white women and one for us...and the one for us causes sterilization.'" This kind of paranoia frustrated and angered birth control activists.

The debates over birth control in 1965 reflected deep-seated divisions over the proper relationship between society and the individual. Some believed society had a moral obligation to prohibit the use of birth control; others believed society had no right to regulate such a private matter, and even urged society to take an active role in preventing unwanted pregnancies and overpopulation; still others suspected birth control proponents of evil motives. Whatever one felt about birth control, however, the advent of the pill and the decision in Griswold v. Connecticut were both major victories for secular humanism. After 1965, of all the major religious denominations only the Catholic Church would continue to oppose birth control. For many women, tradition and fear began to give way to hope and optimism. The terms of the debate had shifted: Opposition to birth control after 1965 would have to be articulated on sociological rather than moral grounds. As sexual pleasure became distinct from reproduction in the public mind, whole new possibilities emerged for both the individual and society.

It is almost impossible to overstate the impact of the pill on American culture. It gave women the freedom to have sex when and where they wished and made contraception palatable to the prudest of the prude. It put birth control on the covers of family magazines and symbolically represented scientific support for the sexual revolution. The pill promised a return to the rationalism and optimism of the Age of Enlightenment.

Paradoxically, however, the pill reinforced American romanticism about sex. It turned contraception into a mysterious, seemingly magical process that partners could avoid discussing with one another. It made it possible to prevent pregnancy without ever touching one's vagina or penis. It was ultimately a technological accommodation to the deepest dualism of Western culture: the belief that the mind is pure and noble while the body is dirty and base. Ironically, the single most revolutionary invention of the 1960s was a tiny, timid little pill, whose appeal derived mainly from the fact that it could be secreted away in a purse or a pocketbook without anyone ever knowing about it. No wonder the pill did little to erase Americans' ambivalence about sex.

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Copyright © 2000 by David Allyn

Tags: Birth Control

About the Author

David Allyn has a Ph.D. from Harvard and has taught history at Princeton University. His articles have appeared in the Washington Post, the Boston Globe, the New York Daily News, and the Journal of American Studies. He has appeared on CNN and MSNBC and has lectured on the sexual revolution at conferences and colleges across the country. He lives in Hoboken, New Jersey, with his wife and daughter. More