How Birth Control Became Legal | Griswold v. Connecticut

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In episode 58 of Supreme Court Briefs, Estelle Griswold and Dr. C. Lee Buxton open up a clinic and start giving out birth control to married couples. There's only one problem with that. In Connecticut, birth control is illegal.

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New Haven, Connecticut

November 1961

Estelle Griswold and Dr. C. Lee Buxton open a clinic where they give advice and resources to married couples in order to help them avoid getting pregnant. They also prescribed contraceptives, or birth control, for married women. Well this got them in trouble. Local authorities arrested them for breaking a law that prohibited anyone from using “any drug, medicinal article, or instrument for the purpose of preventing conception.” Yep, Connecticut straight up banned using birth control. With the help of P.T. Barnum apparently, the state passed the law way back in 1879.

Well Griswold and Buxton, as well as many others, thought the law banning birth control was wrong. After they were found guilty for breaking it and fined $100 each, they appealed to the Appellate Division of the Circuit Court. Griswold and Buxton argued that banning birth control went against the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.

Well the Appellate Division of the Circuit Court disagreed, and upheld their conviction, so Griswold and Buxton appealed again, this time to the Connecticut Supreme Court, who...uh...yeah...also upheld it. So Griswold and Buxton appealed again, this time to the U.S. Supreme Court.

The Supreme Court agreed to hear arguments on March 29 and 30, 1965. The lawyer representing Griswold and Buxton was Catherine Roraback, who claimed that the birth control ban violated the right to marital privacy guaranteed by the Bill of Rights. Now, the word “privacy” does not appear anywhere in the Constitution. However, there was that sneaky Ninth Amendment, which essentially said that there were other rights we all had not specifically listed in the Constitution.

On June 7, 1965, the Court announced they had sided with Griswold. It was 7-2. And guess what? They brought up the Ninth Amendment. They also brought up that the right to privacy was inherent in the First, Third, Fourth, and Fifth Amendments, and said the Due Process Clause of the 14th Amendment should be applied to incorporate Bill of Rights protections to the states.

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