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Eiesenstadt v. Baird

Mar 22, 1972

This Supreme Court case determined there to be no ration reason to withhold contraceptives from single people while allowing married couples the right to them.

Following his Boston University lecture, William Baird gave away vaginal foam (a type of spermicide)  to an unmarried woman, which was prohibited by the law in Massachusetts, and charged with a felony. The case was taken to the United States Supreme Court who determined the law was unconstitutional because it made distinctions between married and unmarried couples without a rational basis.  Justice William J. Brennan, Jr. wrote for the majority "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."