If, under Griswold, the distribution of contraceptives to married persons cannot be prohibited, a ban on distribution to unmarried persons would be equally impermissible. It is true that, in Griswold, the right of privacy in question inhered in the marital relationship. Yet the marital couple is not an independent entity, with a mind and heart of its own, but an association of two individuals, each with a separate intellectual and emotional makeup. 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.
— Justice William J. Brennan Jr., writing for the U.S. Supreme Court in Eisenstadt v. Baird, which established the right of individuals to possess and use contraception. March 22 marked the 41st anniversary of that decision, which came seven years after the Supreme Court held in Griswold v. Connecticut that anti-birth control laws were an unconstitutional violation of the right to privacy for married couples. Yet two years ago Texas lawmakers launched a self-declared “war on birth control.”
