Power

Legal Wrap: 49 Years After Griswold, Legal Contraception Still Up for Debate

The 49th anniversary of Griswold v. Connecticut shows how little progress we've made in the fight for reproductive autonomy.

The 49th anniversary of Griswold v. Connecticut shows how little progress we've made in the fight for reproductive autonomy. Shutterstock

Legal Wrap is a weekly round-up of key legal reproductive rights and justice news.

This weekend marked the 49th anniversary of Griswold v. Connecticut, the landmark Supreme Court decision that decriminalized contraception use between married couples. I take a look at the splintering legacy of one of the most important reproductive privacy cases here.

Meanwhile, anti-choice advocates have asked the Roberts Court to step into the issue of regulating disclosures at so-called crisis pregnancy centers.

It’s true: Those race- and sex-selection abortion bans that are so popular with anti-choice lawmakers are grounded in harmful, destructive racial stereotypes and nothing else.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit let stand its order preliminary blocking an Arizona law restricting the use of abortion-inducing medications while a trial on the law’s constitutionality proceeds.

In Oklahoma, prosecutors declined to file charges against a teenage girl who allegedly self-induced an abortion.

In New York, the “Boss Bill,” which would update the state’s current workplace anti-discrimination laws, cleared a senate committee, making the proposal one step closer to becoming law.

Also in New York, reproductive rights advocates are split on how to move forward with the Women’s Equality Act, a division that Patricia Miller says harkens back to arguments over the state’s first abortion reform bill.

Anti-abortion lawmakers in Ohio are trying to ban health insurance for some types of contraception, arguing the intrauterine device (IUD) and other methods are abortifacients.

A complaint has been filed against a Minnesota men’s health clinic on behalf of several patients who allege the clinic pushed them into injectable erectile dysfunction drugs that led to an eight-hour erection.

In Louisiana, lawmakers passed a bill that will force pregnant women to be kept on mechanical support against their wishes if a doctor determines there is a chance the fetus is viable.

The trial closed in a case challenging the constitutionality of an Alabama law that requires abortion providers to have admitting privileges at nearby hospitals or face criminal prosecution.

Attorneys for the State of North Carolina announced that the state will pay $10 million to victims of the state’s forced sterilization program.

The Montana Supreme Court will publicly censure a judge who blamed a teenage rape victim for being assaulted by a former teacher and said the girl “appeared older than her chronological age.”

Tennessee is the latest state to report big money being spent in judicial races.

Let’s close with a bit of good news from the states: A judge in New Jersey ruled a gay conversion therapy organization is potentially liable for the costs to repair the damage its practitioners inflicted on four young people in efforts to covert them from gay to straight.