Supreme Court rules 6-1 in Eisenstadt v. Baird that states cannot deny contraceptives to unmarried individuals

On March 22, 1972, the Supreme Court ruled 6-1 in Eisenstadt v. Baird that the Equal Protection Clause forbids states from treating married and unmarried individuals differently in access to contraception. The case arose when reproductive rights activist William Baird deliberately gave a 19-year-old unmarried woman contraceptive foam at a Boston University lecture in 1967 to force a test case against Massachusetts law. Justice William Brennan's majority opinion declared that "if the right of privacy means anything, it is the right of the individual, whether 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." The ruling effectively invalidated all state laws restricting contraceptive access to unmarried people and established individual — not marital — privacy as the constitutional anchor, setting up Roe v. Wade eleven months later.