She was pregnant. Approximate her husband had recently traveled to europe where he acquired a drug. It had not been approved yet for use in the United States of america but it was available many european countries. It was used to treat a number of Different Things. Women began taking it to aleave morning sickness and her husband had been in europe. He had acquired some of these pills and brought it back home for her and she takes about 40 of them early on in her pregnancy. They did not know that it causes birth defects. She read an article about the drug, she found out a little bit more and she called her doctor. She started to learn more about what the medicine can do. For children, it can cause brain damage, damage the eyes, nose, ears, face, damage the growth of limbs. And many cases, the children who had been affected by it did not survive at all. In england about half of the babies died within a few months. Somewhere around 10,000 of these children were born. Most in western europe. Making this a dangerous drug before it was discovered. The issue for sherry is this, she has four children and she calls her doctor when she learns what the drug can do. Her doctor says come on in. She goes and he starts to show her pictures of some of these pictures who had been born to mothers who had taken the drug. She said he remembered feeling like someone telling you your child had been run over by a truck. The doctor recommended an abortion which was only legal in cases that might affect the womens life. So they are faced with a choice, do you have the child knowing that this childs life might be difficult, emotional burden for you and your other children, or that the child might not survive past a few months anyway, or do you follow your doctors suggestion and go ahead and have an abortion. This is what sherry said. Naturally i had misgivings. There was life there. Do i have the right to take it . But is it life when you cant dress yourself, run, walk, dance, play games, have dates. If i had no choice, i would have the baby. But i had the way to prevent this tragedy, this sadness. Something happened here that removed that choice. A panel of doctors said that she could not have an abortion in the state of arizona. And so 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 bigger concept, that the choice was not hers to make. It was the panel of doctors and the state that got to make the choice. This is at the heart of the issue of what were going talk about today. Who gets to make that sort of a choice and how that changes . Its a difficult choice be made by the family, by their doctor, by a team of doctors, by the government, by a group of people that dont 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. But what im going to talk about is how that process changed in the United States of america. Thats much of what were going to do today. Of course this was part of a broader revolution in American Society that fundamentally changed American Society in the 1960s and 1970s. Weve been talking about rights in the class and were going to change to this rights revolution. One last major change here. One of the big differences between this and the civil Rights Movement, this is a Rights Movement that is calling on an expansion of what rights actually are. So the civil Rights Movement, if you recall, was largely about rights that were already guaranteed to africanamericans that were not being enforced. This is about asking the constitution to be expanded, to consider a different sort of right and thats what well talk about today as we close the book on the 60s. So i have a generic 60s college here. When you think of the 60s, what do you think about in 1960s . What comes to mind . What do you think comes to mind for Many Americans . [ inaudible question ] disco, dancing, music. Civil rights. Obviously a huge part. Assassination. Certainly not the only one. Anything else . Sexual revolution of the 1960s. Again, because we covered so much of this class, i teach a class on the 60s, but were going to try to cover that here in the next 40 minutes or so that we have. The 60s, generally speaking, one thing that is a big misconception that it was revolution, chaos for everybody all the time. It was certainly not. For Many Americans, the 1960s are basically this, a continuation of the 1950s. Especially early 1960s. Its an era of prosperity. The median Family Income was 5,663 dollars. About 44,000 today. Upward mobility in socioeconomic class. Higher employment. Consumerism and youth cultural, rock and roll. People think about woodstock as a major event. But the hippies and Counter Culture didnt have anything on the actual flash points that most people experienced. The three highest grossing films, the sound of music, 101 dalmatians and the jungle book. Disney dominates the 1960s because all the baby boomers wanting to go to movies. A lot more people saw the sound of music than went to woodstock. When we talk about the 1950s did not work for everyone. The 50s were good for many but they had their problems. Racial limitations, jim crow in the south and housing segregation in the north. Poverty, onefifth of all americans lived in poverty. Gender limitations. Women did not have the same opportunities as men for employment and social advancement. There were some unique disadvantages that women face and conformity. The 1960s were characterized by this incredible sense of optimism and hope. Its really incredible. People from all walks of life, poor black southerners who never had voting rights, for example, are so hopeful because of americas place in the world and the rhetoric of many of its leaders. Some of the famous lines from the 1960s are dripping in this sense of hope, jfk, 1961, washington, d. C. , and 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 the 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. Expansiveness of that optimism. Martin luther king, august 28th, 1963. I have a dream that my four little children will live in a nation that they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character. I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exaulted. So that is an incredible sense of optimism that many people share. We have these moments where we dig in some of the issues in the class. A couple weeks ago we were talking about the civil Rights Movement, the sitins, birmingham, jim crow is dead. The system that has existed since the new south that we talked about in this class. The civil rights did not solve all racial problems in america but it did change the nation and of course we should recognize that. Poverty. This Great Society, equal opportunity act, medicare and medicaid help people that are susceptible to falling into deep debt because of their health care costs. We get housing grants, Higher Education grant which of course affects all of you today. The poverty rate declines rapidly in the 1960s. Its the definitive moment of the decline of poverty in the history of america. It helped people go to schools and it remains an enormous part of our society. The Great Society did not end poverty and of course thats one of the criticisms of it. But at the end of the day weve never got back to poverty like that in this country ever since then. Lets look at some other issues. And one that were going to focus on today here are gender limitations, right . Especially gender limitations for women. We talked about this in the 1950s right after the midterm. Womens domestic roles, remember the kitchen debate. What was that kitchen debate about . Richard nixon, whats the point of the kitchen debate . Whats up with women in the kitchen . Talking about how in america the womans place belongs in the kitchen and how each appliance and products kind of describe the identity in their household. Okay. Yeah . Focused on how in america the children the women were able to offer the children a safe place and educate them. Theres this notion is 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, theres real Serious Problems here. Look, it is sheer sexism in some case. Some believe women lack the intelligence and emotional stability to perform many of the same jobs as men. That women need a man to take care of them and manage the broader parts of their lives. And then also they really dont have a broader role in society outside of rearing those children in the kitchen. They have real consequences here. Its not just a modern inconvenience, i cant go to law school because i have to the baby. But its real discrimination that limits womens freedom and affects the outcome of their lives. Just some examples, in 1960s, a credit card could refuse to give a woman a credit card because she was a woman. You could not get Birth Control in every state. Consider the opportunities that all the men that goes to those schools get, that women are blocked from, all of those career paths. Its ncompetitive quite literally. In many states, women by Legal Definition could not be raped by their spouses and could not divorce their husbands. Many women did not have recourse for a bad or dangerous marriage. Many people. Reporter many people were trapped. Who gets to go to law school, who gets to be a doctor, just the general outright sexism that limited womens ability to rise. Many women at this moment when we have this generational shift, these baby boomers coming up being told theres Endless Possibilities for all of you, they just want better lives they dont want these restrictions placed on their lives. So in response to these limitations, progressive women in the 1960s launch a civil Rights Movement of their own. Largely understood and called second wave feminism. Referred to as the womens liberation movement. Called second wave feminism because it occurred during the progressive era. We talked about the changes of the 1910s. Its inspired by the civil Rights Movement. The civil Rights Movement inspires a whole host of movements that come after it. People see what people like Martin Luther king are doing and say we have a problem too. They use the same tactics, sitins, boycotts. Many of the leaders were part of the civil Rights Movement before joining the womens liberation movement. Of course, again, the idea of rights here is a little bit different. One thing that is different, they seek to expand the idea of rights. Not just say be true to what you said on paper like Martin Luther king said, but actually, no, these are rights that women should have even though theyre not guaranteed in the constitution already. They build upon the leadership of activists but theyre sparked by the injection of new energy, the baby boomers. And this movement begins in the early 1960s and lasts through the late 1970s and you could argue for days with people about when it actually ends, if its ever over, et cetera we dont have time to get into that right now. The broad goals of second wave feminism are this, and theyre pretty ambitious. Reproductive rights. End employment discrimination. Less than 10 of doctors and attorneys in the 1960s were women. Financial equity. Educational access, okay, in these rules that restrict schools for being only for men. Womens liberation, frees themselves of cultural norms that con strict womens role in society. One thing we have to understand too is this is not a binary. Its not all women who are pushing for secondary feminism at all. Well talk about one who was an opponent andnot all men who are fighting against. There are plenty of male activists too. Lets start with reproductive rights by looking at the pill. One of the most important inventions in modern American History. We dont think of that way often because it doesnt blow anything up. But the pill is essential throughout much of the rest of the course and to this point in our lives. In 1960s, the fda approved a bill for contraceptive use by the public. 1. 2 million american women were on it. 1963, 2. 3 women, 1965, it was up to 6. 5 million. At that moment it had become the most popular form of Birth Control for women in america. Many of you understand this quite well. The pill offers a lot of benefits for women. It gives more power over their reproductive lives. It allows them to discreetly control the number of children 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. Thats an economic decision, a health decision, and certainly a labor decision if you think about womens roles in the household with the kitchen. More people would have used the pill, but it was not legal everywhere. And i know, thats hard for us to wrap our head around in our own day and age, right . The pill was actually outlawed in several states until 1965. Enter some of our activists, enter ellen griswold. Sorry, Estelle Griswold, who you see here on the right, was the director of planned parenthood in new haven, connecticut. The state of connecticut had this old law. Passed in 1879, that made it illegal to use a contraception or to assist in helping advise others how to use or access contraceptions. So based on that old law, you could be fined and or receive a light prison sentence for helping people use contraception. With the support of planned parenthood, the national branch, she decides to challenge this law. And so she and a doctor at yale, they open up a Birth Control clinic that provides contraceptive services to married couples. In order to avoid the stigma of what it might mean to help single women, they choose to work with married couples. So they are, of course, charged with violating the connecticut state law. And then they decide to challenge that ruling based on the constitutionality of the law. It goes all the way up the ladder, goes all the way to the Supreme Court. In 1965, the Supreme Court rules in the favor of Estelle Griswold and her colleagues in griswold v. Connecticut. The ruling is largely based on the ninth amendment to the constitution, ooltd a lot of other amendments are invoked as well. Its about individual rights. This is what part of the ninth amendment says. The numeration and the constitution of certain rights shall not be constructed to deny or disparage by the people. It basically means rights that are implied but not stated can also be rights. So the thinking behind this whole logic of deciding griswold v. Connecticut is its individual couples should have the freedom and right to decide whether or not theyre going to use contraceptives. Not the State Government and not the federal government. Its about private family life wrrbl that. Thats who gets to make the decision. It prevents states from forbidding the use of the bill. Gives women married and unmarried greater access to Birth Control, and it serves as a forerunner to row v. Wait whiroe v. Wade, which is much more famous. In 1970, a woman with the fictional name of jane roe filed a lawsuit against henry wade. The District Attorney of dallas county, texas, over the antiabortion law in that county. Before roe, abortion was, as i mentioned at the start of class, was widely illegal, unless you could have a panel of doctors write you a note or approve of an abortion in cases needed to save the life of the woman. That does not mean that women of course did not have abortions. Women with access to doctors had abortions off the books. Others went to underground providers because they were so desperate, which is be incredibly dangerous. Part of the protests surrounding reproductive access focused on basically saying, look, abortions are going to happen anyway. Its better if they occur above ground as opposed to underground. We know throughout the course of American History that women are going to have abortions. Its going to happen whether theres an open market or not. If they were legal, perhaps they would be safer is one of the arguments activists are making. In 1983, a sexologist found that 22 of married women had had an abortion. His data is part of the consistenkinlsey report. We dont know any way to check the data. We dont know because of the nature of it, but clearly, some women were having abortions but it wasnt something people talked about openly with their friends all the time. These things were sort of hidden. Of course, people were having them for a number of different reasons. Financial reasons, maybe not with their partner anymore, they had too many children already, bad timing. Fetal anomalies, the health of the mother, the baby may not live. When we had these conversations now, we tend to focus on the extreme cases, but every single case, of course, back then, like it is now, is individual. Every single case is hard, and it should be hard. But what roe v. Wade did in 1973 is it decided similar to griswold v. Connecticut that it was not up to the government to make these decisions for women. So in the final decision, the court, they spoke of a number of different precedents, including griswold v. Connecticut, which i believe was cited ten times in the final roe decision, and im going to quote