So, want to start with a little story. In 1963, this woman, sherry finkbein, which is a pseudonym, was featured in a life magazine article. The story was about a choice that her family was facing. She was pregnant. Her husband had recently traveled to europe where he acquired a drug called thalidamide. Thalidomide had not been approved for use in the United States of america but it was approved in european countries. It was used to treat a number of Different Things, anxiety, insomnia, nausea. Nausea is key. Women began taking it to relieve morning sickness. Sherrys husband had been in europe, he acquired these pills and brought them back home for her. Shes pregnant, she takes about 40 of them during early on in her pregnancy. She and her husband did not know that thalidomide causes birth defects. Then she read an article about the drug, found out more, and she called her doctor. She started to learn more about what thalidomide can do. For developing babies, children, thalidomide caused brain damage, damage the eyes, nose, years and severely damaged growth of limbs. In many cases, the children affected by thalidomide did not survive at all. In england, about half of the thalidomide babies died within a few months. Somewhere around 10,000 of these children were born in total we think. All across the world, mostly in western europe. Making this an incredibly dangerous drug before the problem was discovered and the drug was later banned. The issue for sherry is this, she has four children. She call hearse doctor when she learns about what the drug can do. Her doctor says come on in. She goes in and he starts to show her pictures of these children who had been born to mothers who had taken the drug. She said she remembered feeling like someone telling you your child has been run over by a truck. Her doctor recommended an abortion, which was only legal in cases that might affect the mothers life at that point in time. Sherry and her family are faced with a choice. Do you have the child knowing that his or her life is going to be might be incredible difficult, provide an enormous financial and emotional burden for you and your other children, or that the child might not survive past a few months any way, or do you follow the doctors suggestion and having an abortion . She said, naturally i had misgivings. There is life there. Do i have the right to take it . But is it like when you cant dress yourself, run, walk, dance, play games . Have dates . If i had no choice, i would have the baby, but i have a way to prevent this tragedy, this sadness. Then something happened here that removed that choice. A panel of doctors said that she could not have an abortion in the state of arizona. At the end of the day, that meant that she had to leave the country if she wanted to have the procedure. Ultimately, the details here are not as important as the broader concept, that the choice was not hers and her familys to make. It was the panel of doctors who got to make the choice. So this is at the heart of the issue of much of what we are going to talk about today. Not the details, but who gets to make that sort of a choice and how that changes. That choice is incredibly difficult, ethical, moral choice, should that be made by the family, by the doctor, by a team of doctors, the government or people that dont even know the family perhaps . Who knows. It is not my job to tell you how to make that choice or who should make it. I think thats between every family, their doctor, certainly perhaps their god. Im going to talk about how that changed in the United States of america. That is much of what we are going to do today. Of course this was part of a broader rights revolution in American Society that fundamentally changed American Society in the 1960s and 1970s. Weve been talking about rights in the class and we will crescendo with that rights revolution. One major change here. One of the big difference between this in the Civil Rights Movement is this is a movement that is calling on the expansion of what rights actually are. In the Civil Rights Movement, it was largely about rights that were already guaranteed to africanamericans that were not being enforced. 14th amendment, 15th amendment, the Civil Rights Act, Voting Rights act were largely about reconstruction amendments. This is about asking the constitution to be expanded. To consider a different kind of rights. That is what well talk about today as we close the book on the 60s. I have a generic 60s collage here. The 60s were a complex decade. They are famous and remembered in a particular way. When youre think of the 60s before this class, what do you think about . Dancing, music. What else . Civil rights. A huge part. The kennedy assassination. The assassination of john f. Kennedy in 1963. Not the only one. Sexual revolution of the 60s. Sexual revolution of the 1960s. Again because we cover so much in this class, i teach a class on the 60s but we are going to try to cover that here in the next 40 minutes or so. So, the 60s generally speaking. A big misconception is that it was revolution and chaos for everybody all the time. It was certainly not. For many americans, the 1960s are basically this, a continuation of the 1950s. Especially the early 1960s. Its an era of prosperity. The median Family Income was 5,3663. Its an era of security, upward mobility, social economic class. Unemployment rate was 4. 8 for men. For women, it was 5. 4 . Consumerism and youth culture, suburban growth, rock and roll. When we think about the 1960s, people might think about woodstock as a major cultural event. But the hippies and counterculture didnt have anything on the actual cultural flashpoints that most people experience. The three highest grossing films of the 1960s, the sound of music, 101 dalmatians, and the jungle book. You have seen many of those movies. Disney dominates the 1960s because of all the baby boomers going out wanting to go to the movies. A lot more salt the sound of music man went to woodstock. Of course, as we talked about, the 1950s did not work for everyone. The 50s were good for many but had problems for many other people. Racial limitations, jim crow in the south and housing segregation in the north. Poverty come as we have talked about before, onefifth of all americans lived in poverty. Gender limitations. This is one we will lean into today. Women did not have the same opportunities as men for employment and social advancement. There were also unique disadvantages that women faced. Also conformity, boredom. Doesnt work for everybody. But the 1960s were also characterized by this incredible sense of optimism and hope. The sense of optimism is incredible. So people from all walks of life, even the most downtrodden disadvantaged people, poor black southerners who had never had Voting Rights, are so hopeful because of americas place in the world and the rhetoric of its leaders. Some of the famous lines from the 1960s were dripping in this sense of hope. John f. Kennedy, january 21, 1961. Washington, d. C. , i quote, i do not believe that any of us would exchange places with any other people or any other generation. The energy, the faith and devotion which we bring to this endeavor will light our country and all who serve it and the glow from that fire can light the world. The expansiveness of that optimism. Martin luther king jr. , perhaps the most hopeful speech in American History. I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will be not judged the color of their skin but by the content of their character. I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted and every hill shall be laid low. The crooked places will be made straight in the glory of the lord initial be revealed and all flesh shall see it together. That is an incredible sense of optimism that many people share. So weve had these moments so far where we fixed some of these issues in the class, and well dig in on sort of a new one today. A couple weeks ago, we were talking about the Civil Rights Movement and how that works. The sits in, the student nonviolent coordinating committee, Voting Rights act. Jim crow is dead. Killed in the mid1960s. A system that had existed since the new south. Black southerners can vote. CivilRights Movement did not solve all racial problems but it did fundamentally change the nation and of curse we shouours recognize that. Poverty. This Great Society. Equal opportunity act, medicare and medicaid help people that are susceptible to falling into deep debt because of health care costs. We get housing grants, Higher Education act, which affects all of you today. The poverty rate declines rapidly in the 1960s. For some groups, the 1960s is the definitive moment of the decline of poverty in the history of america. Helped people go to schools, receive job training, and it remains an enormous part of the society. The Great Society did not end poverty by any stretch of the imagination. Of course, that is one criticism of it. At the end of the day, we have never gotten back to poverty like that in this country ever since then. We have some solutions already. Lets look at some other issues. One that we will focus on today here are gender limitations. Especially limitations for women. We talked about this in the 1950s, after the midterm. Womens domestic roles yall remember the kitchen debate . What was that kitchen debate about . Richard nixon and nikita khrushchev. What is up with women in the kitchen . Talking about how in america the womens place was in the kitchen and it described her identity in the household. Okay. Yeah. Anybody else want to add to that . Also focused on how in america the children were at the forefront, the women were able to offer the children a safe place and educate them. Okay. Yeah. So theres this notion that a womans place is in the kitchen with the children and as benign as that might seem in some Television Shows and all that, there were real serious results here. There were some serious problems. Look, its sheer sexism in some case. A lot of people believe that women lack the intelligence or emotional stability to perform many of the same jobs as men. That women need a man to take care of them and manage broader parts of their lives. Also, they really dont have a broader role in society outside of rearing those children in the kitchen. Again, they have real consequences here. It is not just a moderate inconvenience. Oh, shucks, i cant go to law school because i have to have the baby, but its real discrimination that limits womens freedom and affects the potential of their lives. In 1960, a Credit Card Company could refuse to give a woman a credit card because she was a woman. If you have a credit card in your pocket today, that was not always the case. Women could not serve on juries in every state. You could not get Birth Control in every state. A woman could be fired from her job for becoming pregnant. Women could not go to Ivy League Law schools. Yale and princeton did not admit women until 1969. Consider the opportunities that all the men who go to the schools get that women are instantly blocked from. All those career paths. It is not a meritocracy. Its not competitive. No women allowed quite literally. Women did not receive the same pay for the same work as men of course. In many states, women by Legal Definition could not be raped by their spouses and they could not unilaterally divorce their husbands. That means that legally many women did not have recourse for a bad or dangerous marriage. They were at a severe financial disadvantage if they tried to leave the marriage and couldnt get a credit card or a job. So many people were simply trapped. Then of course, who gets into law school, who gets to become a doctor, who gets promoted. Just this general outright sexism that limited womens able to rise in society in the same way as men. Of course many women, especially at this moment when we had this generational shift, baby boomers coming up being told there are endless possibilities, they want better lives. They dont want these artificial restrictions placed on their lives. They want better opportunities than their mothers had had. So, in response to these limitations, progressive women launched a Civil Rights Movement of their own. Largely understood and called second wave feminism. Also referred to as womens liberation movement. We often call it second wave feminism, because the first wave occurred during the progressive era. The female dominion. We talked about many of the changes that occurred in the 1910s. Second wave feminism is inspired by the Civil Rights Movement. The civilRights Movement inspired a whole host of movements after it. People see what people like Martin Luther king jr. Are doing, they say we have a problem with our group, too, so we launch a similar movement. They use the same tactics. Sitins, boycotts, marches. In fact, leaders were part of the Civil Rights Movement for joining the womens liberation movement. Of course, the idea of rights here is different. One thing thats different is that they seek to expand the idea of rights. Not just say be true to what you set on paper like Martin Luther king jr. Said, but actually these are rights that women should have even though they are not explicitly guaranteed in the constitution already. So they build upon the leadership of older womens activists, womens octob activists. Theyre sparked by new energy. It begins in the early 1960s and lasts through the late 1970s. You could argue with people about when it ends, if its over, et cetera we dont have time to get into that now. The goals are this, reproductive rights, end employment discrimination, so all of these limitations with jobs, one of the readings for today mentioned that less than 10 of doctors and attorneys in the early 1960s were women. End employment disrcrimination. Educational access. In these rules that restrict schools to being only for men, of course, this cultural aspect. Womens liberation. Free themselves of norms and expectations that constrict womens roles in society. And one thing weve got to understand here too is this is not just a binary. Its not all women who are pushing for second wave feminism at all. Well talk about one of the women who was an opponent. There were plenty of male advocates of second wave feminism too. Lets start with reproductive rights by looking at the pill. So one of the most important inventions in modern American History, we dont think of that way because its not, you know, steal or it doesnt fly or it doesnt shoot or anything like that, it doesnt blow anything up. The pill is absolutely essential throughout much of the rest of the course and to this point in time in your own lives. In 1960, the fda approved the pill for use by the public. 1962, 1. 2 million american women were on it. By 1963, it went to up 2. 3 million. At that moment in 1965, it had become the most popular form of Birth Control for women in america. The pill offers a lot of benefits for women. Okay, gives them more power of their reproductive lives, it allows them to discreetly control the number of children that they have. Its Birth Control that is effective and does not rely on a mans cooperation. And its not just for single women by any means. A lot of married women also take the pill because it enables them to take control of the size of their family. Thats not just a decision about how many babies you want to have, its an economic decision and a labor decision. More people would have used the pill, but it was not legal everywhere. I know, thats hard for us to wrap our head around. The pill was actually outlawed in several states until 1965. Enter some of our activists, ellen griswold. Im sorry. Estell griswold. The state of connecticut had this old law passed in 1879 that made it illegal to use a contraception or advising others how to use or access contraceptions. We could be fined and receive a light prison sentence for helping people use contraception. With the support of planned parenthood, griswold decides to challenge this law. She and a doctor open up a Birth Control clinical that provides services to married couples. So they of course charged with violating the state law and they decide to challenge that ruling based on the constitutionality of the law. It goes up the ladder, goes to the support. In 1965, the Supreme Court rules in the favor of griswold. A lot of amendments are invoked, but its about individual rights. This is what part of the ninth amendment says. The enumeration and the constitution of certain rights should not be constructed to deny or disparage others retained by the people. It means that rights are implied but not stated can also be rights. So the thinking behind this logic of deciding griswold v. Connecticut, its individual couples should have the freedom and right to decide whether or not theyre going to use contraception. Its about private, family life. Thats who gets to make the decision. And so its a major victory in terms of access to contraception. It prevents states from forbidding the use of the pill and it serves as a forerunner to roe v. Wade which is of course much more famous. In 1970 a woman with the fictional name of jane roe filed a lawsuit over the antiabortion law in that county. Before roe abortion was widely illegal unless you could have a panel of doctors write you a note or approve of an abortion in cases that were needed to save the life of a woman. So that does not mean of course that women did not have abortions. Women with access to doctors had abortions off the books. Others went to underground providers because they were desperate which could be dangerous. Part of the protests surrounding reproductive access focused on brai basically saying, abortions are going to happen anyone, its better if they occur aboveground as opposed to underground. Its going to happen whether or not theres an open market for