The Republican war on women did not end when Roe v. Wade was overturned. Now they are coming for your birth control pills – and, no, this is not a joke.
This diary entry is NOT JUST FOR LADIES — you gents had best pay attention because this is a VERY BIG DEAL for you, your wives, your daughters, your granddaughters, your nieces and YOU.
For most of our history, contraception was whispered about. In most states, it was illegal to manufacture, sell, use, or teach about contraceptive devices. Under the Connecticut Comstock Act of 1873 it was illegal to use "any drug, medicinal article, or instrument for the purpose of preventing conception".
In 1961 Estelle Griswold and Dr. Lee Buxton opened a clinic in New Haven to teach about contraception and provide contraceptives. Griswold was arrested, found guilty, and appealed. Her case went to the Supreme Court who ruled in Griswold v. Connecticut, 1965, that “marital privacy” is a protected right and contraception is a protected private matter -- just as Roe v. Wade was based largely on privacy rights.
In his concurrence with overturning Roe, Justice Thomas wrote: “In future cases, we should reconsider all of this court’s substantive due process precedents, including Griswold, Obergefell, . . . Because any substantive due process decision is ‘demonstrably erroneous’ we have a duty to ‘correct the error’ established in those precedents.”
According to Thomas, it is “erroneous” for people to have the right to contraception and Griswold should be corrected – same-gender marriage was a mistake and Obergefell needs to be corrected.
In an attempt to protect access to contraception, in July 2022 the House of Representatives passed the “Right to Contraception Act”. EVERY HOUSE REPUBLICAN VOTED “NAY”. And last week, when a similar bill was voted on in the Senate the only Republicans voting YEA were Senators Collins and Murkowski (corrected from original stating that all Republicans voted NAY). There can be no doubt as to where Republicans stand on this issue — an issue that we all think is “settled law” — in our minds it may be but we don’t control the Supreme Court.
The same groups who worked for 50 years to overturn Roe are now working to overturn Griswold because they claim contraception is a “form of abortion” – they lie, it is not — and because they simply want to expand their control over women’s lives.