"If the right of privacy means anything, it is the right of the individual, married or single, to be

[mahatmakanejeeves]

"If the right of privacy means anything, it is the right of the individual, married or single, to be free from unwarranted governmental intrusion into matters so fundamentally affecting a person as the decision whether to bear or beget a child."

Eisenstadt v. Baird

Argued November 17–18, 1971
Decided March 22, 1972

Eisenstadt v. Baird, 405 U.S. 438 (1972), is a United States Supreme Court case that established the right of unmarried people to possess contraception on the same basis as married couples.

The Court struck down a Massachusetts law prohibiting the distribution of contraceptives to unmarried people for the purpose of preventing pregnancy, ruling that it violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Constitution.
....

Significance

While Brennan's ruling conceded that states may prohibit sex outside of marriage, later cases have interpreted its most famous sentence—"If the right of privacy means anything, it is the right of the individual, married or single, to be free from unwarranted governmental intrusion into matters so fundamentally affecting a person as the decision whether to bear or beget a child."—as recognizing the right of single people to procreate on the same basis as married couples, reasoning which would eventually be extended to a more general right to engage in sexual activity.