Kennedy, the Pill and Conservatives for Contraception

[RamboLiberal]

Today is West Virginia's Democratic primary, almost fifty years to the day when it was touted as the bellwether on whether a Roman Catholic could be elected president. That primary, held on May 10, 1960, came a day after the Food and Drug Administration's approval of the birth control pill -- two days in May that show just how impossibly inverted American politics can get in a relatively short period of time. For when West Virginians handed Kennedy a 60.8% victory and thus proved to the country that they were no bigots, it was only after the Democrat promised and promised again not to restrict their access to birth control.

That's right: the conservatives demanded their right to choose.

Catholic opposition to birth control was one of the most oft-cited policy areas latched onto by the anti-papal Protestants. Though President Eisenhower also opposed exporting contraception to third world countries where population growth allegedly outstripped American aid, the fear was that a President Kennedy would restrict its use further -- domestically, even. Asked about birth control measures before Congress, JFK told a Bethany College student, "I may be opposed to birth control as a member of my church, but I have no desire to impose my views on others." Another voter asked what he would do if faced with a political directive on birth control from his Archbishop. "I simply would not obey it," Kennedy said.

Dick Goodwin would later claim that JFK's remarks on Catholicism that day ("Is anyone going to tell me that I lost this primary forty-two years ago when I was baptized?") were totally off the cuff. According to the New York Times, the senator even cracked a joke about whether "Congress might make birth control compulsory." The audience of seven hundred students took it in good humor. Just imagine the outrage such a joke would prompt from conservatives today.

Though it wasn't only the right that feared a de facto theocracy, one where the Vatican would have the final say in the Oval Office. In July 1960, birth control advocate Margaret Sanger said she would "find another place to live" if Kennedy were elected. "In my estimation," she said, "a Roman Catholic is neither a Democrat nor Republican, nor American nor Chinese; he is a Roman Catholic."

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/john-bohrer/kennedy-the-pill-and-cons_b_572322.html

[customerserviceguy]

1. I think it's a bit of a stretch

to say that access to the Pill was an important issue in the West Virginia Democratic primary. That might have been important in NY and CA, but even in those cases, I'm sure it was somewhere around tenth on the list.