Benjamin Disraeli Quotes
No man is regular in his attendance at the House of Commons until he is married.
Disraeli, Benjamin. Sybil, or The Two Nations. Henry Colburn, 1845.
As difficult as it is for us to believe today, this case was about the right of a married couple to use birth control. States, under religious pressure from Roman Catholics and fundamentalist Protestants, made abortion and birth control a crime. In this case a druggist was convicted and given a jail sentence for filling a doctor’s prescription for condoms. The wife would die if she had to bear another child. The Supreme court ruled that the right to privacy trumped the right of the state to criminalize “danagerous” or “immoral” activity when it came to sex and procreation. Since then, as today, there is a vocal minority of Americans who want to go back to making abortion and birth control illegal.
Benjamin Disraeli, 1st Earl of Beaconsfield, KG, PC, MP, FRS, was twice Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, serving in 1868 and from 1874 to 1880. He was a member of the British Conservative Party and played a central role in the creation of the modern Party, defining its policies and its broad outreach. Disraeli is remembered for his influential voice in world affairs, his political battles with the Liberal Party leader William Ewart Gladstone, and his one-nation conservatism or "Tory democracy". He made the Conservatives the party most identified with the glory and power of the British Empire. He is the only British prime minister to have been of Jewish birth. He was also a novelist, publishing works of fiction even as prime minister.
