Abortion has been a highly debated topic over the years.

A wide range of opinions has emerged over time. Typically, Roman Catholics and conservative Protestant Christians have taken the position that abortion should never be allowed unless to save the mothers life. Those who fought for womens rights argued that the woman has the right to her body and can do whatever she pleases without government intervention. Does the government have the right to interfere with a womans rights or does the fetus have the right to life? Starting in 1873 with the Comstock Laws, abortion activists have had a long struggle to get their opinion heard. From 1873 to 1965, the birth control movement led people to believe that women should have rights over their own body and the right to privacy. Despite conservative opposition, the birth control and abortion movements advocated the rights of women and began to get footholds that would eventually propel them to the final decision of Roe v. Wade in 1973. In 1873, the Comstock Laws came into being allowing governmental control over moral issues, which banned the ability to purchase contraceptives. In 1912, Margaret Sanger publicized the debate about birth control. Sanger was a nurse in the Lower East Side of New York where she witnessed the problems with unplanned pregnancies. Sanger quit her job as a nurse and devoted herself to the distribution of birth control information. She was arrested on numerous accounts for disobeying the Comstock Laws. She wrote pamphlets to advocate birth control such as Family Limitation and What Every Girl Should Know. In 1915, Mary Ware Dennet started the National Birth Control League (NBCL) to advocate the use of birth control. She was more aggressive than Sanger because she promoted the complete repeal of all state and federal anti-contraceptive laws. Sanger was a

strong supporter of medically supervised birth control. Sanger knew that a complete repeal of all state and federal anti-contraceptive laws was near impossible at the time. In 1921, Sanger and her supporters called for the First American Birth Control Conference at New Yorks Plaza Hotel. New York City policemen interrupted the concluding event of the conference. Roman Catholic Archbishop Patrick Hayes told the policemen to break up the conference. This is one of many instances where the Roman Catholic Church opposed birth control. In 1923, Sanger founded the Birth Control Clinical Research Bureau to research different methods of birth control. The New York Police raided the bureau in 1929 taking private medical records and arresting two physicians. Physicians across the country were enraged at what took place and eventually in 1937 the American Medical Association officially endorsed birth control as a legitimate medical enterprise. In 1954, Estelle Griswold was named the director of Planned Parenthood League of Connecticut. Griswold wanted to overturn the 1879 Connecticut law making birth control illegal. She protested the law by opening a clinic in 1961 in New Haven distributing contraceptives. She and a doctor were arrested a few days later for distributing contraceptives to a married couple. This led Griswold to make a case out of it saying that it was the couples right to privacy that they could get a contraceptive for family planning. Eventually in 1965, the Supreme Court ruled in Griswolds favor in a 7-2 decision saying that the First, Third, Fourth, Fifth and Ninth Amendments create a new constitutional right, the right to privacy in marital relations allowing contraceptives for a married couple. The Griswold v. Connecticut decision got pro-choice women to think that they might actually have a chance for the right to an abortion because of the liberal Warren

Court sympathizing for womens rights. In 1971, in Vuitch v. United States, a doctor challenged a District of Columbia law pertaining to abortion that said abortion could only be used to preserve the mothers life or health. The Supreme Court ruled the law is unconstitutional based on the word health is too vague. It then rested on the prosecutor for finding evidence to convict someone of having an illegal abortion. The following year in Eisenstadt v. Baird, the Supreme Court struck down a Massachusetts law limiting the distribution of contraceptives to married couples. This case also established the right of unmarried individuals to obtain contraceptives. Finally in 1973, women got the right to a safe and legal abortion in the first trimester of pregnancy in Roe v. Wade. Doc. #1 "OBSCENE LITERATURE; Text of the Bill for Suppressing the Trade." New York Times 28 Feb. 1873. The New York Times Archives. That no obscene, lewd, or lascivious book, pamphlet, paper, print, or other publication, open or covert, of a vulgar or indecent character, or any article or thing designed or intended for the prevention of conception or procuring of abortionshall be carried in the mail. This quote is significant because it came straight out of the Comstock laws. The Comstock laws were instituted in 1873 to increase moral standards for Americans and to penalize those that do not participate in moral behavior. The Comstock laws specifically distinguish that abortion and birth control are wrong and need to be regulated by the government. This marks the point where birth control and abortion activists had to begin their long venture to getting their opinion heard. Doc. #2 Sanger, Margaret. Woman and the New Race. New York: Brentanos, 1920; Bartleby.com, 2000. www.bartleby.com/1013/.(11/11/07).

Woman must have her freedomthe fundamental freedom of choosing whether or not she shall be a mother and how many children she will have. Regardless of what mans attitude may be, that problem is hersand before it can be his, it is hers alone. She goes through the vale of death alone, each time a babe is born. As it is the right neither of man nor the state to coerce her into this ordeal, so it is her right to decide whether she will endure it. That right to decide imposes upon her the duty of clearing the way to knowledge by which she may make and carry out the decision. Margaret Sanger wrote that it is not the right of men to tell women what to do about childbirth because they have no idea the pain that women have to endure. Sanger believes that the government should have no intervention of the womans decision to carry out her abortion. The chapter that this quote falls under is Birth Control: - A Parents Problem or Womans?, which describes Sangers argument that it is the right of the woman to chose birth control or not. This quote explains the tremendous opposition that anti-birth control men and government officials have against a woman and her rights in the birth control issue. Margaret Sanger and the birth control movement led women to believe that they have a right to their own bodies and the right to privacy. Doc. #3 Garrow, David J. Liberty & Sexuality. New York: MacMillan Company, 1994. 234. [any suggestion that] single people should be allowed to use a contraceptive device is so contra to American experience, thought, and family law that it does not merit further discussion. This quote is from Joe Clark who argued against Griswold in Griswold v. Connecticut representing Connecticut and the government. Clark voiced the argument that birth control went against American values. This example shows that the government is trying to control moral issues. This quote shows that there is much that women had to go

against to be able to receive birth control legally. This quote also shows that the birth control movement had to get people to think differently about birth control to have any legislation pass in their favor. Doc. #4 Griswold v. Connecticut. No. 381 U.S. 479. U.S. Supreme Court. 7 June 1965. 14 Nov. 2007 <http://supreme.justia.com/us/381/479/case.html>. It is not the breaking of his doors, and the rummaging of his drawers, that constitutes the essence of the offence; but it is the invasion of his indefeasible right of personal security, personal liberty and private property, where that right has never been forfeited by his conviction of some public offence This passage came from the U.S. Supreme Court majority opinion regarding the conditions of the right to privacy. The case Griswold v. Connecticut established the right to privacy. This case marks a huge foothold for abortion activists to be able to get their opinion heard because the courts actually ruled in favor of limiting restrictions placed on moral issues. Abortion activists were realizing that the U.S. Supreme Court was becoming more sympathetic to rights of freedom for the people. This case eventually led to abortion cases dealing with if abortions can be used to save the mothers health, which ended up ruling in the favor of abortion activists. Doc. #5 Richard Nixon, Statement about Policy on Abortions at Military Base Hospitals in the United States(3 April 1971), Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States, 1971 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1972), 127. From personal and religious beliefs I consider abortion an unacceptable form of population control. Further, unrestricted abortion policies, or abortion on demand, I cannot square with my personal belief in the sanctity of human life including the life of the yet unborn. This statement by President Nixon is important because it shows a major obstacle

that abortion activists had to overcome. Even the President of the United States, the most powerful man on Earth in 1971, opposed abortion. Before the Watergate scandal, Nixon was a highly regarded man that could easily influence public opinion. This made it very difficult for the abortion activists to win their cases because they were in the minority. This statement is also important because abortion activists still had to overcome a massive obstacle up until the legalization of abortion. The majority of American citizens during the time Roe v. Wade was ruled (1973) would say that abortion was wrong and Nixon states the reasons why people do oppose abortion. Many people believed in the sanctity of the life of the unborn and believed that abortion was an unacceptable form of population control. Doc. #6

"Statements by 2 Cardinals." New York Times 23 Jan. 1973: 20.

The child in the womb has the right to life, to the life he already possesses, and this is a right no court has the authority to deny. This statement was made by John Cardinal Krol, Archbishop of Philadelphia and president of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops. This man was a very influential man and a leader of the Roman Catholic Church. Catholics have a strong opposition to abortion because they feel the fetus is a future person and has the right to life from the 14th amendment. Catholics made it difficult for the abortion effort to go through. From birth control to abortion all the way to Roe v. Wade, the Catholics have opposed preventing natural birth from occurring. Doc. #7 Van Gelder, Lawrence.Cardinals Shocked Reaction Mixed. New York Times 23 Jan. 1973: 1, 20.

By this act hundreds of thousands of American women every year will be spared the medical risks and emotional horrors of backstreet and selfinduced abortions. And as a nation, we shall be a step further toward assuring the birthright of every child to be welcomed by its parents at the time of its birth. This statement was given by Dr. Alan F. Guttmacher, president of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America. This statement is important because it shows what dangers women were faced with to get an abortion before it became legalized. It also shows the view of Planned Parenthood, the leading abortion activist organization in 1973, that a child should be welcomed into the world, and not be a hindrance to the parents. Doc. #8 Roe v. Wade. No. 410 U.S. 113. U.S. Supreme Court. 22 Jan. 1973. 14 Nov. 2007 <http://supreme.justia.com/us/410/113/case.html>. Roe alleged that she was unmarried and pregnant; that she wished to terminate her pregnancy by an abortion "performed by a competent, licensed physician, under safe, clinical conditions"; that she was unable to get a "legal" abortion in Texas because her life did not appear to be threatened by the continuation of her pregnancy; and that she could not afford to travel to another jurisdiction in order to secure a legal abortion under safe conditions. She claimed that the Texas statutes were unconstitutionally vague and that they abridged her right of personal privacy, protected by the First, Fourth, Fifth, Ninth, and Fourteenth Amendments. This is a statement from the Supreme Court in Roe v. Wade regarding the conditions that Roe (Norma McCorvey) had to go through. Roe set out to sue on behalf of herself and women similarly situated to ensure the ability to get a legal abortion under safe conditions. This statement is also valuable because it shows what amendments the constitution covers for the rights of women to get an abortion. The Supreme Court essentially ruled the case on this passage analyzing each of the amendments and stating if the right of privacy for Roe is protected by the constitution.

From origins of the controversy of abortion and birth control in 1873 to the ruling of Roe v. Wade in 1973, legalized abortion has come a long way. The birth control movement had its struggles having to overcome the Comstock laws. Margaret Sanger got the birth control movement going in 1912. Sanger and anyone who distributed birth control was breaking the law until 1965 making it very difficult to have people participate in a campaign they knew that went against the law. Even though birth control was despised by the Roman Catholic Church and conservative Protestant Christians, the birth control movement managed to gain ground. In 1937, the American Medical Association officially endorsed birth control as a legitimate medical enterprise showing politicians that even the doctors in America believe that birth control should be legalized. Finally, in 1965, the birth control movement made a break through when Griswold v. Connecticut legalized contraceptives to married couples. The birth control movement eventually led to the abortion movement after the ruling in Griswold v. Connecticut. In 1971, the abortion movement had a break through having a U.S. Supreme Court case rule in their favor in Vuitch v. United States that ruled that abortion is okay if the doctor feels it is necessary to perform the operation based on the womans health. The prosecutor is then responsible to come up with evidence to say that the woman is having an illegal abortion. Just one year later in Eisenstadt v. Baird, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that birth control to married couples could not be limited. Also, the case ruled that an unmarried individual could obtain a contraceptive. After 100 years of struggling for abortion to be legalized, Roe v. Wade finally made it possible for women to get a safe and legal abortion in 1973.