The current brouhaha concerning the Susan G. Komen Foundation has brought to mind the history of Planned Parenthood, an organization of such long standing that most Americans alive today can’t remember when it didn’t exist. An excellent film, Choices of the Heart, was made some years ago about Margaret Sanger, generally considered the founder of Planned Parenthood. When shown on TV in 1995 the film was considered controversial. I remember being vaguely surprised by this—abortion, of course, had been controversial for years—but birth control had been a quietly accepted fact of life when I was growing up in the 1950s and 1960s.
And now birth control, or contraception, as we generally think of it, is considered controversial once more--not by progressives, certainly, but by the right wing that seeks to return our society to the way it was in the nineteenth century. If we owe Sanger gratitude for her pioneering work in establishing contraceptive knowledge as a human right, we owe Estelle Griswold, carrying Sanger's work forward, equal thanks.
Born in Connecticut in 1900, Estelle Trebert grew up to study music both in the United States and Paris, later moving to Washington, DC with her husband, Richard Griswold.
Like Sanger, who worked in the slums of New York early in the 20th century, Griswold had ample opportunity to observe the misery of poverty. In Griswold’s case, it was through her work with governmental and nongovernmental organizations in the slums of Rio de Janeiro, Algiers, and Puerto Rico. Convinced of the corrosive effect of overpopulation on the ability to achieve a decent standard of living, she returned to the United States and joined Planned Parenthood. In those days the law in Connecticut held that no woman, married or unmarried, could ask her doctor or pharmacist for contraceptives or advice on using them,
An entry on the Connecticut Women’s Hall of Fame Web site states: “With Griswold’s leadership, Planned Parenthood volunteers initiated ‘border runs’ to transport women to birth control clinics in Rhode Island and New York, where such medical attention was legal.”
In 1961, to test the law Griswold and Dr. C. Lee Buxton opened a clinic in Connecticut and began dispensing contraceptives.
The result was that Griswold and Dr. Buxton were arrested, convicted, and fined $100 each. They appealed their case to the Supreme Court of the United States, which in the landmark Griswold v. Connecticut decision in 1965 invalidated the Connecticut law and upheld the right to privacy.
The Griswold decision was followed by the Baird v. Eisenstadt decision in 1972. The origins of this case concerned William Baird, who passed out containers of contraceptive foam to students during a lecture at Boston University. He was arrested by Sheriff Eisenstadt, who charged him with violating Massachusetts law. The law held that only a doctor or other professional could dispense contraceptives, and then only to married people. The Eisenstadt v. Baird decision validated the right of unmarried couples to privacy.
Estelle Griswold died in Florida in 1981. Let us remember her determination, persistence, and courage in working for the right we take for granted today.