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.”
Hi everyone. Tennessee public school teachers are just now starting to feel the pinch from the new Tennessee anti-evolution law. A new, “classic-style” Charles post on this subject, along with a link to an important hometown newspaper article, are up on my Archaeology in Tennessee blog at the following URL:
http://contextintn.wordpress.com
Give TFN your first priority here and then come on over to my blog for a little fun and conversation about the fate of science in public schools. It’ll get you primed for the coming Texas Textbook War, and I will be standing in the gap with you in that war.
Per the lead TFN post above, I would just like to say this to all Texas conservatives. The female genie is out of the bottle and loves it out here in the free and open world. This is your official notice that you have ABSOLUTELY ZERO chance of ever putting her back into the frequently pregnant, housewife, stay-at-home mom role of the 1950s and 1960s. Anything and everything you try to do with birth control or whatever else to put her back into that bottle is DOOMED to failure. DOOMED. DOOMED. DOOMED. Your ideas about the proper role of a woman will die forever with your generation. ALL IS ALREADY LOST.
I just thought you might like to know.