DOCSLIB.ORG

Momma's Got the Pill” How Anthony Comstock and Griswold V

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Momma's Got the Pill” How Anthony Comstock and Griswold V “Momma's Got the Pill” How Anthony Comstock and Griswold v. Connecticut Shaped U.S. Childbearing Martha J. Bailey Draft: August 2007 Abstract The 1960s ushered in a new era in U.S. demographic history characterized by sharp reductions in family size. To estimate the importance of oral contraception in this transition, this paper develops a new empirical strategy based upon idiosyncratic variation in the language of “Comstock” laws. The central results of this analysis suggest that the birth control pill accelerated the reduction in the fertility rate in the early 1960s and facilitated the transition to the two-child household. The implications of these results reach beyond the 1960s, as reduced fertility has had a lasting impact on the American family and economy. Contact information The author is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Economics and a Research Affiliate at the Population Studies Center at the University of Michigan, and a Faculty Research Fellow at the National Bureau of Economic Research. Mailing address: Department of Economics, University of Michigan, 611 Tappan Street, Ann Arbor, Michigan, 48108-1220; email: [email protected]. Acknowledgements Research on this project was generously supported by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the University of Michigan Population Studies Center. I am grateful for insightful comments from Jeremy Atack, Charlie Brown, Tom Buchmueller, Kasey Buckles, Bill Collins, John DiNardo, Daniel Eisenberg, David Frisvold, David Lam, Bob Margo, Heather Royer, Gary Solon, Tara Watson, Charlie Westoff, and Bob Willis. This paper has also benefited from suggestions from the participants at the University of Minnesota Population Center, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Annual Meetings in Health Policy Research, and seminar participants at the University of Indiana, Stanford University, University of Toronto Law School, the University of Michigan Labor Seminar and Population Studies Center, and the National Bureau of Economic Research. Lindley Barbee, Xiaoqing Song, and Kate VandenBroek conducted outstanding research assistance. Allie Davido provided exceptional legal research and coauthored the legal appendix. I gratefully acknowledge information shared by Joanna Lahey and Liz Oltmans Ananat that aided in the construction of this paper's legal appendix. Isaac W. Eberstein made me aware of Lorretta Lynn's controversial 1972 hit, “Pill,” which I reference in the paper’s title. Lyrics to Loretta Lynn's 1972 song, “Pill” (Lorene Allen - Don McHan - T.D. Bayles) © ‘72 Coal Miners Music, BMI / Guaranty Music, BMI You wined me and dined me when I was your girl Told me if I’d be your wife you'd show me the world But all I’ve seen of this old world is a bed and a doctor bill I'm tearin’ down your brooder house cause now I've got the pill All these years I’ve stayed at home while you had all your fun And every year that’s gone by another baby’s come There’s gonna be some changes made right here on nursery hill You’ve set this chicken your last time cause now I’ve got the pill This old maternity dress I’ve got is going in the garbage The clothes I’m wearin’ from now on won't take up so much yardage Miniskirts hot pants and a few little fancy frills Yeah I’m making up for all those years since I’ve got the pill I’m tired of all your crowing how you and your hens play While holdin’ a couple in my arms another’s on the way This chicken’s done tore up her nest and ready to make a deal And you can’t afford to turn it down cause you know I’ve got the pill This incubator is overused because you’ve kept it filled The feeling good comes easy now since I’ve got the pill It's getting’ dark it’s roostin’ time tonight it’s too good to be real Oh daddy don’t you worry now cause momma’s got the pill Oh daddy don’t you worry now cause momma’s got the pill I. Introduction During the 1960s, significant changes in women's decisions regarding marriage, childbearing, and work ushered in a new era of U.S. demographic history. Over the next twenty years, U.S. fertility rates fell by 50 percent (Figure I), and the proportion of women having fewer than three children increased from 42 to 66 percent (Figure II).1 Almost half a century later, the American family and labor force remain fundamentally altered (Lundberg and Pollak 2007). Although hundreds of articles in academic and popular journals document these trends and speculate about their origins, the underlying causes of this “second demographic transition” remain a subject of scholarly debate. The demographic literature has emphasized the role of technology in regulating the supply of births and, in particular, the birth control pill. Armed with national survey evidence, population scientists heralded the 1960s as a period of “contraceptive revolution” characterized by substantial declines in unplanned marital childbearing (Westoff 1975) and a significant rise in the frequency of marital intercourse (Westoff 1974). In his Presidential Address to the Population Association in 1975, Charles Westoff asserted that “the entire decline in births within marriage across the decade of the ‘sixties’ can be attributed to the improvement in the control of fertility” (579). Economists have been critical of this view and have instead emphasized changes in the demand for children.2 Because sharp reduction in the U.S. fertility rate in the 1960s followed the U.S. baby boom, some would argue that this period represents a reversion to the longer-term U.S. trend—and not a revolution at all. One need only point to sharp declines in the U.S. fertility rate during the 1920s, for instance, to highlight how rapidly behavior might have changed in the absence of modern contraceptive technology. For these reasons, Gary Becker concludes in his Treatise on the Family (1991: 143) that “the 1 This comparison is made for cohorts entering their childbearing years in difference decades. Women born in 1930 (1949) entered their childbearing years during the 1950s (1970s). 2 The longer-term decline in fertility is often attributed to the gradual evolution in the demand for children. This explanation highlights the rising opportunity cost of childbearing associated with increases in women's education, the growth of the clerical sector, and falling discrimination in the workplace. The baby boom interrupted this longer-term decline from around 1940 to 1957. Momma’s Got the Pill - 1 ‘contraceptive revolution’ … ushered in by the pill has probably not been a major cause of the sharp drop in fertility in recent decades.” The importance of this scholarly debate is difficult to overstate. The relevance of birth control technology to human behavior bears upon theoretical formulations of economic and population growth, many of which implicitly ignore significant changes in the technology and costs of regulating births. It also has substantial implications for economic models of the age-structure, family size and structure, and the composition of the labor force. Finally, it shapes our evaluations of domestic and international family planning policies, which have been the subject of heated scholarly discourse (Pritchett 1994a, 1994b; Bongaarts 1994, Knowles et al. 1994) Yet the difficulty of disentangling the contribution of modern contraception has limited the conclusions of research on this question. This is especially true in the context of the United States, where the release of the first birth control pill in 1957 coincided with the peak of the baby boom and rapidly changing awareness, attitudes, and norms about women’s rights and roles.3 This simultaneity renders standard, inter-temporal (before-and-after or cross-cohort) comparisons difficult to interpret. Fifty years after the advent of oral contraception, it is unclear whether the 1960s were a “contraceptive revolution” or a revolution of the times. Recent empirical research provides little insight into this question, because the legal variation used for identification is concentrated in the early 1970s and only affected access to the pill among unmarried, childless women under age 21 (Goldin and Katz 2002, Bailey 2006, Guldi 2007).4 Although the findings of these studies are suggestive, it is doubtful that they generalize to the 90 percent of childbearing 3 In 1963, President Kennedy's Commission on the Status of Women released a report documenting pervasive discrimination against women. Betty Friedan published the best-seller, The Feminine Mystique in 1963, a book documenting the emotional and intellectual oppression of the middle-class housewife. In 1964, Title VII of the Civil Rights Act codified a prohibition on employment discrimination against women. (Many believe that “sex” was included as a last-ditch effort to kill the bill. Nevertheless, this piece of legislation formed a legal basis for prosecuting discrimination against women in years to come.) In 1966, the National Organization for Women was organized by the NAACP. By the end of the decade, the women’s movement was pervasive and instrumental in generating awareness of gender inequities, if not opportunities, for many women. 4 Goldin and Katz (2002) and Bailey (2006) use variation in the age of legal consent. This variation existed primarily for unmarried women ages 18 to 20. Momma’s Got the Pill - 2 decisions that occurred after marriage in the 1960s. The “power of the pill” for the population of married, adult women remains an open question. This paper seeks to quantify the importance of the birth control pill in shaping married U.S. women's childbearing decisions using a novel empirical strategy. This strategy makes use of a newly compiled legal history of U.S. anti-obscenity, or “Comstock,” laws and exploits idiosyncratic variation in statutory language.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • The Early History of the Anti-Contraceptive Laws in Massachusetts and Connecticut Author(S): Carol Flora Brooks Source: American Quarterly, Vol
    The Early History of the Anti-Contraceptive Laws in Massachusetts and Connecticut Author(s): Carol Flora Brooks Source: American Quarterly, Vol. 18, No. 1 (Spring, 1966), pp. 3-23 Published by: The Johns Hopkins University Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2711107 Accessed: 04-10-2016 15:00 UTC JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at http://about.jstor.org/terms The Johns Hopkins University Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to American Quarterly This content downloaded from 137.140.166.174 on Tue, 04 Oct 2016 15:00:43 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms CAROL FLORA BROOKS Dundas, Ont., Canada The Early History of the Anti-Contraceptive Laws in Massachusetts and Connecticut THE DEBATE WHICH SPORADICALLY ERUPTS IN THE COURTS AND PRESS OF Massachusetts over its law against the dissemination of contraceptive information and in Connecticut over its law against the use of contra- ceptives has concerned primarily the anti-contraceptive doctrine of the Roman Catholic Church.' The religious snarls in this controversy have nearly obliterated any memory of the widespread popular and legal sup- pression of discussion about contraception which prevailed in the United States prior to the 1930s.
    [Show full text]
  • Certainty and the Censor's Dilemma Robert Corn-Revere
    Hastings Constitutional Law Quarterly Volume 45 Article 4 Number 2 Winter 2018 1-1-2018 Certainty and the Censor's Dilemma Robert Corn-Revere Follow this and additional works at: https://repository.uchastings.edu/ hastings_constitutional_law_quaterly Part of the Constitutional Law Commons Recommended Citation Robert Corn-Revere, Certainty and the Censor's Dilemma, 45 Hastings Const. L.Q. 301 (2018). Available at: https://repository.uchastings.edu/hastings_constitutional_law_quaterly/vol45/iss2/4 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Law Journals at UC Hastings Scholarship Repository. It has been accepted for inclusion in Hastings Constitutional Law Quarterly by an authorized editor of UC Hastings Scholarship Repository. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Certainty and the Censor's Dilemma by ROBERT CORN-REVERE* Pity the plight of poor Anthony Comstock. The man H. L. Mencken described as "the Copernicus of a quite new art and science," who literally invented the profession of antiobscenity crusader in the waning days of the nineteenth century, ultimately got, as legendary comic Rodney Dangerfield would say, "no respect, no respect at all." As head of the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice, and special agent for the U.S. Post Office under a law that popularly bore his name, Comstock was, in Mencken's words, the one "who first capitalized moral endeavor like baseball or the soap business, and made himself the first of its kept professors."' For more than four decades, Comstock terrorized writers, publishers, and artists-driving some to suicide-yet he also was the butt of public ridicule.
    [Show full text]
  • Bessie L. Moses 1893-1965, BALTIMORE CITY
    Bessie L. Moses 1893-1965, BALTIMORE CITY ... We resent, as physicians, any limitation on the part of the government to our right to ... any medical articles, books or instruments ... ntil 1936, American women had little access to birth control. The rigid Comstock Laws, proposed by antivice reformer, Anthony Comstock, Uand passed by Congress in 1873, tightened the existing law against obscenity and specified that birth-control information and items could not be mailed or imported. Although this censorship prevented couples from limiting family size and posed sometimes life-threatening health problems for all women, the poor were most vulnerable. Limited incomes and large families sig- nificantly reduced standards of living and quality of life. Untold numbers of women, particularly poor women, attempted to terminate unwanted pregnan- cies through illegal or self-inflicted abortions. They paid heavy tolls in morbid- ity and mortality. In 1916, Margaret Sanger opened America's first birth-control clinic in Brooklyn, New York.9 A decade later, a group of liberal leaders determined to save women's lives opened a similar clinic in Baltimore and chose Dr. Bessie Moses as its first medical director. Bessie Moses was born in Baltimore during the waning days of horsecars and kerosene street lamps. After attending public schools, she graduated in 1915 from Goucher College and then studied biology at Johns Hopkins COURTES* ()F THE PLANNED PARENTHOOD liMXLATION OF MARYLAND, INC. HEALTH AND SCIENCE 209 University. Moses wanted to study medicine, but discouraged by her family, she spent the next two years teaching biology and zoology at Tulane University and Wellesley College.
    [Show full text]
  • Download Your Own Rogues Trading Cards! (PDF)
    b a b a b a b a b a sssssssssss sssssssssss sssssssssss sssssssssss sssssssssss sssssssssss Abner B. Newcomb Ann Trow Lohman Anthony Comstock Peter Ellis aka Banjo Bill Gurney aka “Big detective sssssssssssabortionist postalsssssssssss inspector, moral crusader Pete aka Luther aka Big Bill” the Queersman aka asssssssssss b Pete aka Peter Emerson 1833-unknown. The son of suc- a b a b Big Bill the Koniacker 1812-78. Emigrated to New York 1844-1915. Founded the N.Y. So- thief counterfeit, thief, cracksman cessful parents, was writing for in her teens, married Charles Lo- ciety for the Suppression of Vice sssssssssss sssssssssss Boston newspapers by age 17, a b a b hman, freethinker and friend of and lobbied Congress to pass the Ca. 1845-unknown. Minstrel- was made editor of the Rockland Comstock Law prohibiting dis- Life dates unknown. Ran a large Chief of Police George Matsell. gang member, helped rob over Republican, and then wrote for With her husband and brother, semination of obscene material and organized gang of counter- $2.7 million from the Manhat- the New York World. In 1861 was developed a line of birth control and information on birth control. feiters who flooded the entire made secretary for the U.S. Mar- products and abortifacients, and Sworn enemy of Madame Rest- tan Institute for Savings in 1878, country with millions of dollars shall and then Detective. After the performed abortions. Committed ell, Victoria Woodhull, Tennessee a heist funded in part by Marm in fake bills in the late 1860s and War, appointed Operative in the suicide soon after being arrested Claflin, Margaret Sanger, Emma Mandelbaum the fence.
    [Show full text]
  • Legal Appendix to “Momma's Got the Pill” Coding of Comstock Statutes
    Legal Appendix to “Momma’s Got the Pill” Martha J. Bailey and Allison Davido Coding of Comstock Statutes and the Regulation of Birth Control, 1873 to 1973 This appendix summarizes information about the evolution of anti-obscenity statutes in the 48 coterminous United States and their relevance for the use of contraception from 1958 to 1965.1 It also summarizes the information in secondary sources, our coding scheme and how coding decisions are reached in each case. For each state, we note the relevant text of the statute, the agreement (or disagreement) of our interpretation with Dennett (1926), Smith (1964), Dienes (1972), and a 1974 report by the Department of Health and Economic Welfare (DHEW). We also incorporate relevant judicial decisions, attorney general decisions, and information from Planned Parenthood Affiliate Histories (Guttmacher 1979) when this information informs an understanding of the relevant statutory climate. Brief Overview of Anti-Obscenity Statutes in the United States before Griswold v. Connecticut In 1873, the U.S. Congress codified a prohibition on the sales of contraception with the passage of the Comstock Act. Named for their zealous congressional advocate, Anthony Comstock, this law outlawed the interstate mailing, shipping or importing of articles, drugs, medicines and printed materials of “obscenities”, which applied to anything used “for the prevention of conception.”2 Despite the narrow purview of this federal Act, it also aimed to “incite every State Legislature to enact similar laws” (Dienes 1972: 43, quoting Representative Merrimam, New York Times, Mar. 15, 1873, p. 3, col. 3). While this Act failed to curtail the trade in obscenities directly, it did succeed in this secondary purpose.
    [Show full text]
  • Anthony Comstock and Margaret Sanger: Abortion, Freedom, and Class in Modern America
    City University of New York (CUNY) CUNY Academic Works Publications and Research Queens College 2010 The Inadvertent Alliance of Anthony Comstock and Margaret Sanger: Abortion, Freedom, and Class in Modern America Karen Weingarten CUNY Queens College How does access to this work benefit ou?y Let us know! More information about this work at: https://academicworks.cuny.edu/qc_pubs/141 Discover additional works at: https://academicworks.cuny.edu This work is made publicly available by the City University of New York (CUNY). Contact: [email protected] The Inadvertent Alliance of Anthony Comstock and Margaret Sanger: Abortion, Freedom, and Class in Modern America Karen Weingarten This article investigates how moral-reformer Anthony Comstock, who helped outlaw the practice of birth control and to have abortion criminalized, and Margaret Sanger, founder of Planned Parenthood and birth-control activist, advanced their causes through the discourse of freedom and self-control. While Comstock’s and Sanger’s works are often seen in opposition, this article questions that positioning by pointing out how they both lobbied against accessible abortion using similar tactics. Finally, this article demonstrates how Comstock and Sanger, through different means, worked to present abortion as a depraved practice that would lead to the demise of American society. Presenting Comstock and Sanger side by side, this article shows one example of the reasons why it is problematic to use the language of rights and freedom to argue for fair and equal access to abortion. Keywords: abortion / Anthony Comstock / birth control / eugenics / Margaret Sanger / self-control and freedom There’s more than one kind of freedom.
    [Show full text]
  • Margaret Sanger: Feminist Heroine, Public Nuisance, Or Social
    MARGARET SANGER: FEMINIST HEROINE, PUBLIC NUISANCE, OR SOCIAL ENGINEER? by Clover F. Gross A Thesis Presented to The Faculty of Humboldt State University In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Master of Arts Social Science Emphasis: Teaching American History August 2006 MARGARET SANGER: FEMINIST HEROINE, PUBLIC NUISANCE, OR SOCIAL ENGINEER? by Clover F. Gross Approved by the Master’s Thesis Committee: Delores McBroome, Major Professor Date Gayle Olson-Raymer, Committee Member Date Rodney Sievers, Committee Member Date Delores McBroome, Graduate Coordinator MASS – Teaching American History Cohort Date Chris A. Hopper, Dean for Research Graduate Studies & International Programs Date ABSTRACT This thesis will examine the life and career of Margaret Sanger in her capacity as pioneer of the American birth control movement. The thesis will present divergent viewpoints from both an historic and legal perspective as to the strategies and effectiveness of her nearly 50 year campaign to bring legal birth control techniques and information to the United States. While most of the authors and articles discussed appear to agree on the facts of Mrs. Sanger’s actions and achievements, there is a wide variety of interpretation as to the intentions and ultimate ramifications of these accomplishments. The emphasis of the thesis will be to go beyond the differing perspectives of the cited historians/authors/legal scholars to analytically investigate the biases, circumstances, and ideological motivations behind their works and assertions. In many ways the ambiguities surrounding Margaret Sanger’s place in history mirror the contemporary confusion around the concepts of birth control, feminism, eugenics, and direct political action.
    [Show full text]
  • Attack on Planned Parenthood: a Historical Analysis
    ARTICLES THE ATTACK ON PLANNED PARENTHOOD: A HISTORICAL ANALYSIS Sarah Primrose* "If you want to understand today, you have to search yesterday." -Pearl S. Buck' INTRODUCTION .............................................. 166 I. THE HISTORY OF THE PLANNED PARENTHOOD O RGANIZATION ...................................... 168 A. The TraditionalRole of Women: Early Views on Family Planning ............................ 169 B. Margaret Sanger and the Birth Control L eague ......................................... 175 C. The Women's Rights Movement of the 1960s... 184 II. THE "CONTROVERSIAL" NATURE OF PLANNED PARENTHOOD ....................................... 187 A. The Contraception Debate: Women's Rights Cosiderations .................................. 188 B. Changing Attitudes?: The PartialSocial Acceptance of Planned Parenthood ............ 191 III. THE MODERN ATTACK ON PLANNED PARENTHOOD ....................................... 194 A. Legislative Attempts to Defund Planned Parenthood .................................... 195 B. The Need for Planned Parenthood ............. 204 CONCLUSION ................................................ 209 * This piece was awarded the Sarah Weddington Writing Prize for New Stu- dent Scholarship. J.D., Michigan State College of Law, 2012. The author would like to thank Professor Charles Ten Brink, Dr. Janet Primrose, Mark Primrose, and Jack McCloskey for helpful comments. The author would also like to thank her grand- mothers, Lynn Primrose and Hazel Widaman, for their encouragement. The author is also very grateful for the assistance of the UCLA Women's Law Journal. 1. PEARL S. BUCK (1892 - 1973). UCLA WOMEN'S LAW JOURNAL [Vol. 19:165 INTRODUCTION Legislators at both the federal and state levels have recently attacked the Planned Parenthood organization. 2 Some legisla- tors have requested a massive audit of the organization, while 3 others have demanded the total defunding of the organization. The debate has sparked a firestorm of controversy, with staunch 4 advocates of the organization responding with strong words.
    [Show full text]
  • The American Urge to Censor: Freedom of Expression Versus the Desire to Sanitize Society - from Anthony Comstock to 2 Live Crew
    William & Mary Law Review Volume 33 (1991-1992) Issue 3 Article 4 March 1992 The American Urge to Censor: Freedom of Expression Versus the Desire to Sanitize Society - From Anthony Comstock to 2 Live Crew Margaret A. Blanchard Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarship.law.wm.edu/wmlr Part of the Constitutional Law Commons, and the First Amendment Commons Repository Citation Margaret A. Blanchard, The American Urge to Censor: Freedom of Expression Versus the Desire to Sanitize Society - From Anthony Comstock to 2 Live Crew, 33 Wm. & Mary L. Rev. 741 (1992), https://scholarship.law.wm.edu/wmlr/vol33/iss3/4 Copyright c 1992 by the authors. This article is brought to you by the William & Mary Law School Scholarship Repository. https://scholarship.law.wm.edu/wmlr THE AMERICAN URGE TO CENSOR: FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION VERSUS THE DESIRE TO SANITIZE SOCIETY-FROM ANTHONY COMSTOCK TO 2 LIVE CREW MARGARET A. BLANCHARD* Three decades ago, Leonard W. Levy surveyed early American history and advanced the theory that the vaunted free press tradition was more myth than reality.' Such a supposition out- raged critics, who felt that Levy had tampered 'with evidence and had tarnished the image of a value central to the nation's development. 2 The attacks on his work were so vehement that, twenty-five years after the publication of the original study, Professor Levy revised his earlier work and tempered its findings to indicate that perhaps a tradition of press freedom had been developing in the nation after all and that his phrase "legacy of suppression" was too harsh.3 The controversy over the Levy book reflects, in part, the importance of the free press lobby among American historians, lawyers, and journalists.
    [Show full text]
  • The Anti-Obscenity and Birth Control Movements, 1870-1930
    LESSON PLANS GENDER EQUALITY DEBATING VICE: The Anti-Obscenity and Birth Control Movements, 1870-1930 Image Caption (Detail) [ Link ] OVERVIEW COMMON CORE STATE STANDARDS Students will investigate primary sources to learn about activists on both sides of the debate over obscenity and reproductive rights in New York City CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RI.3.1: Ask and answer questions to demonstrate understanding of in order to understand both its history and its contemporary relevance. a text, referring explicitly to the text as the basis for the answers. STUDENT GOALS CCSS ELA-LITERACY.RW.6.3: Write Students will examine the 1873 Comstock Law in order to understand narratives to develop real or imagined the restrictions that were placed on materials that censors deemed experiences or events using effective obscene, including materials related to contraception and family technique, relevant descriptive details, and planning. well-structured event sequences. Students will learn about the movement for reproductive rights in CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RI.11-12.6: Determine early twentieth century New York City through primary sources an author’s point of view or purpose in a text relating to the Brownsville Clinic operated by Margaret Sanger and the in which the rhetoric is particularly effective, National Birth Control League. analyzing how style and content contribute to the power, persuasiveness or beauty of Students will read a speech by the anarchist intellectual Emma the text. Goldman promoting birth control. They will evaluate her arguments about reproductive rights and consider how moral reformers such as Anthony Comstock might have responded to them. Students will trace the historical course of legislation pertaining to access to family planning in order to place contemporary debates over contraception, abortion, and birth control in historical perspective.
    [Show full text]
  • Evangelical Reform and the Paradoxical Origins of the Right to Privacy John W
    Maryland Law Review Volume 75 | Issue 1 Article 13 Evangelical Reform and the Paradoxical Origins of the Right to Privacy John W. Compton Follow this and additional works at: http://digitalcommons.law.umaryland.edu/mlr Part of the Constitutional Law Commons, Health Law and Policy Commons, Law and Society Commons, and the Sexuality and the Law Commons Recommended Citation 75 MD. L. REV. 362 (2015) This Symposium is brought to you for free and open access by the Academic Journals at DigitalCommons@UM Carey Law. It has been accepted for inclusion in Maryland Law Review by an authorized administrator of DigitalCommons@UM Carey Law. For more information, please contact [email protected]. EVANGELICAL REFORM AND THE PARADOXICAL ORIGINS OF THE RIGHT TO PRIVACY ∗ JOHN W. COMPTON The story of how American constitutional law came to recognize a right to privacy in matters pertaining to sex and reproduction has been told many times. The most familiar version of the story follows a “whiggish” trajectory, and describes a century-long struggle between two fundamental- ly incompatible philosophies or worldviews.1 The older philosophy held that republican government was impossible in the absence of what William Novak has called a “well-regulated society”—that is to say, in the absence of broadly shared, and legally enforced, moral standards.2 The newer phi- losophy, which follows the basic contours of John Stuart Mill’s harm prin- ciple, maintains that the state should permit citizens to follow their own in- clinations in the realm of sexual intimacy, at least so long as their conduct is consensual and does not involve direct harm to others.3 Over time, we are told, the Millian philosophy gradually displaced the older, republican philosophy and its institutional manifestations.
    [Show full text]
  • " Momma's Got the Pill": How Anthony Comstock and Griswold V
    NBER WORKING PAPER SERIES "MOMMA'S GOT THE PILL": HOW ANTHONY COMSTOCK AND GRISWOLD V. CONNECTICUT SHAPED U.S. CHILDBEARING Martha J. Bailey Working Paper 14675 http://www.nber.org/papers/w14675 NATIONAL BUREAU OF ECONOMIC RESEARCH 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138 January 2009 Research on this project was generously supported by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the University of Michigan Population Studies Center. I am grateful for insightful comments from Jeremy Atack, Dale Ballou, Charlie Brown, Tom Buchmueller, Kasey Buckles, Bill Collins, John DiNardo, Daniel Eisenberg, David Frisvold, David Lam, Bob Margo, Heather Royer, Jeff Smith, Gary Solon, Tara Watson, Charlie Westoff, and Bob Willis. This paper has also benefited from the comments and suggestions the participants at the University of Minnesota Population Center, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Annual Meetings in Health Policy Research, and seminar participants at the University of Indiana, Stanford University, University of Toronto Law School, the University of Michigan Labor Seminar and Population Studies Center, and the National Bureau of Economic Research. Allie Davido provided exceptional legal research and coauthored the online legal appendix. We gratefully acknowledge input from Joanna Lahey and Elizabeth Oltmans Ananat in the construction of this paper's legal appendix. I am also grateful to Lindley Barbee, Emily Gray, and Kate VandenBroek for research assistance. Isaac W. Eberstein made me aware of Loretta Lynn's controversial 1972 hit, “Pill,” referenced in the paper’s title. The views expressed herein are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Bureau of Economic Research.
    [Show full text]