Christian Conservatives vs. Sex: The Long War Over Reproductive Freedom [View all]

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http://www.alternet.org/sex/155226/christian_conservatives_vs._sex%3A_the_long_war_over_reproductive_freedom/

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On Nov. 1, 1961, Estelle Griswold and Dr. Charles Lee Buxton did something radical: They opened a clinic in New Haven, Conn., to dispense birth control information.

Nine days later, police raided the clinic and arrested Griswold, executive director of the Planned Parenthood League of Connecticut, and Buxton, chairman of the obstetrics department at Yale Medical School.

Buxton and Griswold weren’t surprised. In fact, they had been expecting to be arrested all along. Their decision to open a birth control clinic in New Haven was a deliberately provocative act, designed to test a law originally passed in Connecticut in 1879 that banned artificial forms of contraceptives in the state for everyone – even married couples.

Connecticut’s anti-birth control statute was only being sporadically enforced at the time, and some types of birth control were available in drug stores. But Buxton and Griswold believed that as long as the law was in place, access to contraceptives wasn’t secure.