“Planned Parenthood dates its beginnings to 1916 when Sanger, her sister, and a friend open America’s first birth control clinic in Brooklyn, New York. In Sanger’s America, women cannot vote, sign contracts, have bank accounts, or divorce abusive husbands. They cannot control the number of children they have or obtain information about birth control, because in the 1870s a series of draconian measures, called the Comstock laws, made contraception illegal and declared information about family planning and contraception “obscene.”

In 1936 Sanger and other birth control proponents win their first major judicial victory. Sanger is arrested after leaking information to postal authorities that she illegally ordered birth control products through the mail. Her case triggers a review of the issue by the courts. Judge Augustus Hand, writing for the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, orders a sweeping liberalization of federal Comstock laws, ruling that contemporary data on the damages of unplanned pregnancy and the benefits of contraception mean that contraceptive devices and birth control could no longer be classified as obscene. Because Judge Hand’s decision applies only to New York, Connecticut, and Vermont, it is almost 30 years before married couples throughout the country have the right to obtain contraceptives from licensed physicians.”

Think condoms, not abortions.

“By the 1960s, Planned Parenthood is a respected and powerful voice in the movement for women’s rights, fighting successfully for increased access to birth control, pushing for the creation and funding of domestic and international family planning programs, and playing a crucial role in the development of the pill and IUD (intrauterine device).”

It was only in 1962 that that changed.

“In 1961, Estelle Griswold, president of Planned Parenthood League of Connecticut, opens a birth control clinic to dispense contraceptives and to put the state’s ban on birth control to the test. Her act of civil disobedience is rewarded: In 1965, the U.S. Supreme Court, in Griswold v. Connecticut, removes one of the last serious barriers to family planning when it strikes down state laws prohibiting the use of contraceptives by married couples.”

That is the context.

As for 1962?

In 1962, Alan Guttmacher, M.D., begins his 12-year tenure as Planned Parenthood president. He is a strong advocate for a woman’s right to safe and legal abortion at a time when Americans are increasingly angered by the dire consequences of abortion restrictions.

* From 1956 to 1962, hundreds of women in the U.S. and Europe who took the drug thalidomide while pregnant give birth to children missing arms and legs. Sherri Finkbine, an American mother of four who used thalidomide, is refused an abortion. More than 60 percent of Americans disapprove of the refusal. Mrs. Finkbine flees to Sweden for a safe, legal abortion. (The fetus is gravely deformed.) Her case and others involving women who have taken thalidomide convince many Americans that anti-abortion laws need reform.

* In 1966, an epidemic of rubella, which, like thalidomide, causes a high incidence of fetal deformity, heightens public anger against abortion bans.

These two tragedies, combined with women’s growing demands for the right to control their own fertility, bolster public support for legal and safe abortion.