Life Without Access to Contraceptives
Life Without Fair Courts Editorial Cartoon Series by Mikhaela Reid
Eisenstadt v. Baird, 405 U.S. 438 (1972)
Plaintiff: Sheriff, Thomas Eisenstadt
Defendant: Reproductive rights activist and clinic director William Baird
Issue: Can a state regulate selling contraceptives only to married people?
Case summary
William Baird, director of three birth control and abortion referral clinics was arrested for exhibiting contraceptives to a group of students during a lecture at Boston University and for giving one condom and one contraceptive foam package to an unmarried female student at the end of his lecture. Police arrested him under a statute that prohibited anyone but doctors or pharmacists from distributing contraceptives to anyone who was not married. Baird was convicted and the case eventually made its way to the U.S. Supreme Court. Baird claimed that by drawing a distinction between single and married people, the state was violating people's equal rights by arbitrarily deciding who deserved contraceptives and who did not. The Court ultimately agreed, finding that the denial of contraceptives would "materially impair the ability of single persons" to exercise their rights. Justice Brennan, writing for the Court, said: "If the right of privacy means anything, it is the right of the individual, married or single, to be free from unwarranted governmental intrusion into matters so fundamentally affecting a person as the decision whether to bear or beget a child." The Eisenstadt decision was quoted several times in Lawrence v. Texas, Lambda Legal's case that overturned all remaining sodomy laws in the U.S.
Read more about the subject in Two Issues, Common Bonds: LGBT Rights and Reproductive Freedom.
