Baird fights for your freedom

Sometime within the next two weeks, birth control crusader Bill Baird will appear for
sentencing before the State Supreme Court in what may be the final act of his dramatic struggle
against Massachusetts archaic birth control laws.

He was arrested April 8, 1967 at Boston University for handing out a contraceptive to an
unmarried coed. The state has found him guilty of “crimes against chastity” and if he can’t raise
enough money for appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court, where he has a much better chance of
overturning this absurd judgment, he stands a chance of going to jail for ten years.
Massachusetts laws prohibit the dissemination of birth control information or devices, to
unmarried women. Baird is testing the constitutionality of this century-old ruling.
Baird’s detractors have raised several arguments in their opposition to the changing of these
laws, a favorite being that increased access to birth control information will lead to a
corresponding increase in promiscuity.

Baird has been fighting this kind of puritanical reasoning through the courts. Of the
prosecution he stated: They claim, believe it or not, that if these laws are revoked all the women
in Massachusetts will become prostitutes. They feel it is the state’s responsibility to protect the
morality of its citizens.

This view needs repudiating. It is not business of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts to
legislate laws concerning the morality of birth control. The state should have no power to abridge
individual freedom by controlling the distribution of information and devices to these unmarried
females who have decided in favor of birth control. It is none of the state’s business how an
unmarried female conducts her personal life with regard to sex any more than it is its business to
invade the privacy and sanctity of a married couple’s bedroom.

The issue of birth control has far-reaching implications relating to the abortion issue.
Abortion is illegal in the U.S. According to Baird, there are 1,000,000 abortions performed every
year. 10,000 women die or face serious dangers because they are forced to deal underground
through illegal channels.

It is not illogical to assume that is. System where birth control information and devices are
readily available, where information and education flourishes, in place of repression and dangers
and threat, these dreadful figures may be reduced.

If abortion were legal, women who have decided on this course of action would be allowed the
safety and protection of hospitals and the care of doctors.

As usual the laws work against the poor. There are obviously women who want abortions.
They range from the most disparate of situations. Robert Coles wrote in “New Republic,” June
10, 1967 (Who’s to Be Born?).

“There are the poor, who by the many thousands hurt themselves terribly and sometimes
fatally in a desperate effort to be rid of a responsibility they feel they simply cannot accept;
and there are the wealthy, some of whom can get a psychiatrist to call them “ill” and thus fit
for “therapeutic abortions.” (In New York City the death rate from criminal abortions is ten
times higher among Negroes and Puerto Ricans than among whites.)

Birth control and abortion are related subjects. Bill Baird has been battling on his own for
enlightened approaches by lawmakers; he stuck out his neck to challenge this “cradle of
liberty’s” Puritanical approach to birth control. He is tired and broke. The authorities have
pressured him from all sides; he is in desperate need. He is fighting against stupid laws which
affect all human elements on this campus. He needs massive contributions to continue this
struggle. He needs pickets, petitions, support groups and money, even the pocket change of
students. Baird’s address is 1575 Commonwealth Ave. Apt. 4. Help him.