This is
a post containing an original reply I made to an OP who spoke about how leaders wanting to repeal Griswold has hit her so hard. I concur with everything the OP said and my reply went into a little history both social and personal. Since that post some very nice people have asked me to make it an OP of its' own. I am thankful that a forum like this exists for us to exchange ideas, opinions and information. This is very emotional for me to go back in my mind to long ago and although I could expand the discussion of how it was at the same time I cannot. So here is the reply I made and I hope that by having this as an OP that it helps to raise awareness for us to stand up for women who may be current or potential victims and to acknowledge the past victims who may now only be a memory.
" The vast majority of people alive in the US today have no memory of how it really was in the '50's/'60's. They romanticize the period because of what they see on TV and in movies. But I lived it. For those who don't know or remember let me clue you in.
No-fault divorce didn't exist and so women would be trapped in abusive marriages. There was at that time little support for a woman and her children if she simply left. Police routinely looked the other way when the husbands went "hunting" to see where their wife had gone. TV and movies routinely portrayed "argumentative" women being slapped by men as just an acceptable and expected result of arguments. I can remember where I grew up that it was not uncommon to see a woman now and then with severe bruising and black eyes. The authorities, clergy and neighbors would usually try to convince the woman to go back home and "work it out". I mention this because it was as common as the daily paper all across America. Also a woman was not supposed to "refuse" sex with her husband and so marital rape was as common as coffee in the morning.
For so many women the ability to prevent forced pregnancy by having contraception was something that was out of reach in most states. Couples with good relationships suffered also so I don't mean to imply that all were bad. But the paternalistic power structure was in tight control and most of these abusive husbands would get little more than a lecture from authorities. If that. The prevailing attitude was that if the woman got beat up she had been "asking for it".
I saw mothers, who already had 4 children as an example, scraping by in near poverty and trying to struggle through another pregnancy despite being in poor physical condition. The woman I most remember was a tall woman but very gaunt and her husband had been so abusive that she would routinely come to get groceries with bruises on her arms and wearing sunglasses in the store so nobody could see her blackened eyes. The abuse and intimidation had made her extremely nervous and jumpy and I remember her crying in the store. She miscarried the baby and should have been in the hospital but her husband wouldn't let her go. She was sick at home for a long time. Nobody saw her for a long time. I was grown about that time and moved away. Remembering her now for the first time since then made me start to tear up.
These men who are in control lost a bit of their grip on women after Griswold, no-fault divorce and improvements to AFDC benefits. An awful lot of men (not all of course) were very unhappy about losing their ready made cook, housekeeper, laundress and sex object that they were able to get simply by getting a marriage license and a ceremony. The resentment resulted in phrases about a woman "not knowing that her place was in the home, kitchen, bedroom etc." and you hear it translated by these conservative ghouls today as "traditional family values" and other such crap. "
= new reply since forum marked as read
It's a time that should never be forgotten - or repeated. The fight is not yet over. 
That original thread may have exhausted itself, so I am considering making my latest post, about the economics of reproductive freedom, a new OP.
