D gave a lecture where he exhibited contraceptive devices and gave a girl some vaginal foam at the end of his presentation.
MA law has three implications…
Married persons may obtain contraceptives to prevent pregnancy but only from doctors on prescription.
Single persons may not obtain contraceptives from anyone to prevent pregnancy.
Married or single persons may obtain contraceptives to prevent spread of disease.
Procedural History
SCOTUSÂ found law unconstitutional.
Issues
Is the right of unmarried persons to contraceptives a fundamental right?
Holding/Rule
The right of unmarried persons to contraceptive devices is a fundamental right.
Reasoning
The state's purpose in enacting the law is to protect purity, protect chastity, encourage self-restraint.
The effect of the ban on distribution of contraceptives to unmarried persons has at best a marginal relation to the proffered objective.
Griswold said that distribution of contraceptives to married person is protected.
There, married couples were at issue; however, a married couple is only an association of two individuals each with a separate intellectual and emotional makeup.
If the right of privacy means anything, it is the right of the individual, married or single, to be free from unwarranted gov't intrusion into matters so fundamentally affecting a person as the decision whether to have children.
Dissent
Burger
There is nothing in the 14th amendment that suggests that these medicinal forms of contraceptives must be available in the open market.
The Court is just injecting its own views into this ruling.
Notes
Extended Griswold to give right to contraception (have or not have children) to single and married people.
In Carey v. Population Services (1977), extended right to all, even those under 16.
