Among American Catholics, the birth-control debate grew more heated that year, becoming part of a larger struggle over women’s rights and sexual freedom. In June, the US Supreme Court overturned state laws that banned artificial contraception, including birth-control pills, and decreed that Americans enjoyed a “right to privacy” in family planning. For many Catholics, the ruling was logical and humane. Several bishops said the government should never have been in the business of regulating women’s fertility. “Catholics do not need the support of civil law to be faithful to their religious convictions,” said Cardinal Cushing in Boston. “And they do not seek to impose by law their moral views on other members of society.”
At the time, American priests complained they were being bombarded with questions from parishioners about why taking oral contraceptives was a sin. The Pill did not kill a living being or interfere with the physical structure of sperm and eggs, so how was that sinful? Many priests were forced to relearn the scriptural justification—the Old Testament story about a minor biblical character named Onan, who refused to impregnate his sister-in-law after his brother’s death. (Many twentieth-century theologians were convinced the story was meant to condemn Onan’s supposed lack of family loyalty, not birth control. Many also found it strange the Vatican wanted to remind Catholics of an otherwise distasteful scriptural passage about a man pressured to have sex with his brother’s widow.)
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