Bill Baird (born June 20, 1932) is a reproductive rights pioneer, called by some media the "father" of the birth control and abortion-rights movement. He was jailed eight times in five states in the 1960s for lecturing on abortion and birth control. Baird is believed to be the first and only non-lawyer in American history with three Supreme Court victories.
In 1967, hundreds of students at Boston University petitioned Baird to challenge a Massachusetts law that prohibited providing contraception to unmarried persons. On April 6, 1967, he gave a lecture at Boston University, during which he gave a condom and a package of over-the-counter contraceptive foam to a female college student. He was immediately arrested and eventually jailed. His appeal of his conviction culminated in the 1972 Supreme Court decision Eisenstadt v. Baird, which established the right of unmarried persons to possess contraception on the same basis as married couples. U.S. Supreme Court Justice William J. Brennan, Jr. wrote in that decision: "If the right of privacy means anything, it is the right of the individual to be free from unwarranted governmental intrusion into matters so fundamentally affecting a person as to whether to bear or beget a child." Eisenstadt v. Baird has been described as "among the most influential in the United States during the entire century by any manner or means of measurement".
Early life
Baird grew up in Brooklyn, and was raised a strict Lutheran.
Birth control rights activism
Bill Baird's advocacy for reproductive rights began in 1963 after witnessing the death of an unmarried mother of nine children who died of a self-inflicted coat hanger abortion. As the clinical director of EMKO, a birth control manufacturer, he had been coordinating research at Harlem Hospital when she stumbled into the corridor, covered with blood from the waist down.
In 1963, he began giving away EMKO birth control foam samples including at malls where his activities often met with religious opposition. He was threatened with arrest for distributing free birth control foam in Hempstead, New York. Baird founded the Parents Aid Society and later distributed contraceptives in a converted delivery truck that he called the "Plan Van." In 1966 Baird established the first birth control club on a college campus at Hofstra University.
He was sent to jail for teaching birth control and distributing abortion literature in New York, New Jersey, and Wisconsin. Baird's punishment galvanized feminists like Anne Koedt to speak out in his defense. On May 13, 1965, he challenged New York's anti-birth control statute, law 1142. He was arrested in Hempstead, NY and jailed for teaching birth control out of his mobile "Plan Van." Baird's challenges led to the legalization of birth control in New York. Planned Parenthood President Alan Guttmacher criticized Baird and stated that Baird was "overenthusiastic and every couple seeking birth control information should seek a physician."
In 1966, Baird challenged New Jersey's restrictive birth control statute after the commissioner of welfare threatened to jail unwed mothers under the law of fornication. When Baird arrived in Freehold, New Jersey in his "Plan Van" to challenge the law, he was arrested and jailed for publicly displaying contraceptive devices.
Baird challenged restrictive birth control laws in the state of Wisconsin in 1969 and was again arrested and jailed for showing "birth control and indecent articles" to a Northland College audience in Ashland.
Eisenstadt v. Baird
In 1967 Boston University students petitioned Baird to challenge Massachusetts's stringent "Crimes Against Chastity, Decency, Morality and Good Order" law (i.e. Chapter 272, section 21A. On April 6, 1967 he gave a speech to 1,500 students and others at Boston University on abortion, birth control, environmental pollution, and overpopulation. He gave a female student one condom and a package of contraceptive foam. Police arrested him as a felon and he faced up to ten years in jail. He was convicted and sentenced to three months in Boston's Charles Street Jail.
He fought to legalize birth control without the support of major abortion rights or feminist organizations, several of which attacked him. Betty Friedan of the National Abortion Rights Action League (NARAL) has implied many times since 1971 that Baird was a "CIA agent", including a statement in The New York Times. During his challenge to the Massachusetts law, Planned Parenthood stated that "there is nothing to be gained by court action of this kind. The only way to remove the limitations remaining in the law is through the legislative process."