Estelle Griswold and Dr. Charles Lee Buxton open a Planned Parenthood birth control clinic in New Haven to deliberately violate Connecticut's 1879 ban on contraception

Estelle Griswold, Executive Director of the Planned Parenthood League of Connecticut, and Dr. Charles Lee Buxton, a Yale Medical School OB/GYN professor, opened a birth control clinic at 79 Trumbull Street in New Haven on November 1, 1961, with the explicit purpose of violating — and thus enabling challenge to — Connecticut's 1879 statute making contraception use and advice a criminal offense. Previous attempts to challenge the law had failed for lack of standing. By opening the clinic and counseling patients, Griswold and Buxton created the enforcement record necessary to establish their standing to challenge the statute in court.