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Two Who Paved the Way for Reproductive Choice

February 1, 2008

There are two generations of women alive now who have no memory of what life was like before abortion and birth control were legal in the United States. It was a different world, a world where unwanted pregnancies were terminated in alleys, filthy apartments, or—if money wasn't an object—in Japan, Mexico, France, or another more "progressive" country. And birth control? While we think of Margaret Sanger, the Unitarian crusader for family planning who coined the phrase "birth control" in 1915 and founded Planned Parenthood so that others would have a choice, there were many parts of the United States where birth control was outlawed decades after Sanger's death and where the "rhythm method" of family planning was the only one legally available to women.

In the course of less than fifty years, reproductive choice has changed dramatically. New, highly effective methods of birth control are widely—although far from universally—available. Abortion is safer, but 86% of U.S. counties have no provider, and fewer and fewer medical schools are training doctors to perform them. And while the issue of choice in birth control seems assured in most parts of the United States, efforts to limit access to contraception and abortion are alive and well in the United States, largely through state legislatures. Certainly, the matter of abortion rights is once again under attack. If we look back to the mid- to late 1960s, we can see the role courageous Unitarian Universalists played in making it possible for future generations to have a choice.

In Connecticut prior to 1965, there was no legal access to birth control for women or couples. State law, based on a statute formalized in 1879, prohibited use of contraceptives. Though several attempts had been made to change the law, all had failed. Those who worked for the Planned Parenthood League of Connecticut (PPLC), under the direction of Estelle Griswold, affirmed the right of women to choose to use contraception and helped women obtain such assistance through "border runs" to legal birth control clinics in Rhode Island and New York.

In 1961, Griswold and PPLC Medical Director C. Lee Buxton, an eminent Yale obstetrician/gynecologist, opened a birth control clinic in New Haven, hoping to test the 1879 law. The police raided the clinic; the two were convicted and the case appealed. The ruling made its way through the legal system and ultimately to the U.S. Supreme Court, where arguments were heard in 1965 (Griswold v. Connecticut).

While the case was in the courts, the PPLC offices had been shut down, but the women running the organization had become more committed than ever to providing women access to family planning methods. Vera Weiner, a member of the Unitarian Society of New Haven, along with Dorothy Giles, Louise Fleck, Marjorie Ullman, and others, decided that the clinic had to continue to operate even though the New Haven police had officially closed it.

Weiner and the others set up operation in the basement of the Weiner household in a suburb of New Haven. They put cardboard over the windows and engaged a registered nurse to dispense the newly-available birth control pill, as well as packages of contraceptive jelly, diaphragms, and vaginal foams, to all those who requested it. They set up typewriters and tables and went through the local newspapers, writing letters to all women whose birth announcements appeared in print, offering them contraception. They swore their families to secrecy about the operation and carried on, even though publicly, the clinic had been closed down.

Weiner said at the time, "The government doesn't have the right to tell women what they do in private. That's up to the women themselves." Indeed, Griswold v. Connecticut was about the right to privacy, not specifically about birth control. On that basis, the Supreme Court overturned Estelle Griswold's conviction and invalidated the Connecticut law. Although the Bill of Rights does not explicitly mention "privacy," the justices of the Court found, by a vote of 7-2, that privacy was protected through the different clauses of the Bill of Rights.

Since Griswold, the Supreme Court has cited the right to privacy in several rulings protecting access to sexual health care, most notably in Roe v. Wade (1973). The Court ruled that a woman's choice to an abortion was protected as a private decision between her and her doctor. For the most part, the Court made these later rulings on the basis of Justice John Harlan II's substantive due process rationale, rendered in the Griswold case.

Vera Weiner died in 2006, and the women of the Unitarian Society of New Haven who joined in working for PPLC have all passed on. But their work, which kept the birth control clinic open during the time Griswold v. Connecticut was in litigation, helped ensure that women in Connecticut had choices for family planning. Vera's daughter Deborah writes, "I've always been astonished at the dedication my mother and those other women demonstrated when that struggle was going on. The legal risks they took were significant but still they persisted in doing what they thought was not only right, but just."

At nearly the same time, in Minnesota, a group of Unitarians and activists gathered to discuss how to obtain legalization of abortion in the state. In 1966, the group, including Bob McCoy, a member of the First Unitarian Society of Minneapolis, founded the Minnesota Council for the Legal Termination of Pregnancy (MCLTP). MCLTP initially backed a bill which would allow abortions if approved by a committee of doctors, but soon adopted the view that abortion was a personal decision, and worked to completely overturn the state's abortion ban.

During these early years, MCLTP was based in McCoy's house and entirely run by volunteers who developed the board of advisors, organized volunteer activities, and worked on the political scene. Dr. Margaret Horrobin, Bob McCoy's spouse, remembers, "People called Bob to see if he could help them get abortions. I remember he had a call from someone in Chicago who had had an illegal abortion, and she was standing in a phone booth, bleeding. He said, "I have to find somewhere for these people to go." And so the office was headquartered in our house. Over the years we saw several thousand women. Bob had a crew of women who educated themselves into being abortion counselors, and they talked to the people who came. Our neighbors were very tolerant...there were people parked up and down the street [each night], waiting for their turn to talk to someone. The total number of women referred to California, Canada, and other places where abortion was legal, was huge...Bob sent over 9,000 people for legal procedures during those years."

MCLTP campaigned for legal abortion by establishing relationships with state legislators, hiring a lobbyist, and building a solid grassroots organization. In 1972, MCLTP changed its name to the Minnesota Organization for the Repeal of Abortion Laws (MORAL), reflecting its stance on repealing legislation that limited reproductive choice, and operated the sister organization Abortion Counseling Service (ACS). Margaret Horrobin recalls, "Bob relished debate, and got a lot of nasty letters, but he never backed down from speaking to groups." He was a good speaker and a salesman, and his territory covered Minnesota, the Dakotas, and Iowa. He would combine his selling trips with speaking on this subject. He would speak at the Unitarian Churches and fellowships, almost anywhere there was an audience."

When Roe v. Wade was handed down in 1973, MORAL's mission had finally been achieved and the Abortion Counseling Service was no longer needed. But McCoy's dedication to helping women receive essential legal medical care to end unwanted pregnancy had become a lasting legacy that shaped the formation of NARAL Minnesota.

Bob McCoy, now 81, retired in 2002 and was diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease in 2003, but his wife's memory allows his story to live on.

End-note: In the 1970s, money for family planning became available under Title X of the Public Health Act and Title XX of the Social Security Act. Beginning in 1980, the Reagan administration, and later the Bush administration, worked to restrict Title X by imposing a gag rule on the staff of family planning clinics. Upheld in 1991 by the Supreme Court in Rust v. Sullivan, the gag rule prevented staff in federally funded clinics from telling patients about all options for managing a pregnancy, including abortion. PPLC and other family planning clinics around the U.S. resolved to not accept federal funds with those restrictions.

With the election of President Clinton in 1992 the gag rule was overturned administratively for the duration of his term. Upon assuming office in 2001, however, President George W. Bush reinstated the global version of the gag rule (imposed on recipients of U.S. foreign aid), and further restrictions and application of the gag rule on Title X have been imposed during the Bush administration.

This is the second in a series of articles UUA.org will feature from January through March which lift up the critical reproductive health-related work of Unitarian Universalist individuals, congregations, and the Association.

For more information contact la_womensissues @ uua.org.

Last updated on Wednesday, February 6, 2008.

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Two Who Paved the Way for Reproductive Choice