In New Haven: Griswold v. Connecticut

By JULIA CALAGIOVANNI
January 25, 2012

As we mark the 39th anniversary of the Roe v. Wade decision, increasingly under attack, Broads looks back at New Haven’s own contribution to the struggle for reproductive rights.  On November 1, 1961, Esther Griswold, the Executive Director of the Connecticut Birth Control League, and C. Lee Buxton, Chairman of the Yale University Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, opened a clinic on the corner of Trumbull Street and Whitney Avenue in New Haven. The clinic operated for only nine days until it was shut down for violating Connecticut law, and Griswold and Buxton were arrested.

The clinic’s services – providing “information, instruction, and medical advice to married persons as to the means of preventing conception,” as well as the devices themselves – were deemed illegal under a rarely-enforced state law – the Comstock Law – that made either using contraception or providing it to another person a criminal offense. Similar “obscenity” laws were also in effect at the time in other states.

The repercussions of the New Haven clinic were not unexpected. Griswold and Buxton had intended the clinic as a “test case.” The League’s attempts to overturn the Comstock Law had been unsuccessful. An earlier case, Poe v. Ullman, was found invalid because the law had not, in that case, actually been enforced. Shortly after the Poe verdict, Griswold and Buxton decided to try a more direct tactic. They were convicted, and two appeals failed. Three years later, the Supreme Court to agreed to hear the case, and hearings were held in late March of 1965. On June 7th, the Comstock Law was, by a 7-2 vote, determined unconstitutional. (However, it was not until 1972 that Eisenstadt v. Baird extended the same “right to privacy” to unmarried women as well.)

Thomas I. Emerson, a Yale Law School professor and attorney arguing the case, stated eloquently that the issue “touches upon individual rights: the right to protect life and health, the right of advancing scientific knowledge, the right to have children voluntarily.” Justice William O. Douglas echoed this in the majority opinion, citing the First, Third, Fifth, Ninth and Fourteenth Amendments. Taken together, these Amendments were used to establish a broader, unprecedented constitutional “right to privacy.” The Griswold ruling was also crucial in the Roe v. Wade case that followed; logically extended, the constitutional right to privacy in matters of reproductive health established in Griswold was also relevant in the argument to legalize abortion.

Griswold has been in the news lately, as Republican presidential hopeful Rick Santorum attempts to plan an all-out legal attack on women’s reproductive autonomy. He has had some success in the past: unfortunately, the Santorum-sponsored Partial-Birth Abortion Act of 2003 still stands. We learned in October that he believes contraception “is a license to do things in a sexual realm that is counter to how things are supposed to be.” Effectively, he would like to reinstate the Comstock Law – federally.  And when he argues for the right of states to establish their own laws, he just happens to choose Griswold as an example of a ruling he disagrees with, a transparent attempt to justify his extreme position.

But cheer up, feminists! Santorum was recently “glitter-bombed” by members of Occupy Charleston; he most likely won’t be the Republican nominee; and, thanks to Dan Savage,  there’s still that minor search engine problem (Google it. Or don’t.). So the next time you go to Caseus, give thanks for the fearless advocates of reproductive rights whose work in New Haven secured crucial freedoms for women across the country.

Julia Calagiovanni is a freshman in Yale College. She is a staff writer for Broad Recognition.