Griswold v. Connecticut

GRISWOLD V. CONNECTICUT,

GRISWOLD V. CONNECTICUT, 381 U.S. 479 (1965). When the state Planned Parenthood League opened a clinic in New Haven, Connecticut, in 1961, two staff members were arrested and fined under a rarely used law for giving advice and a prescription for a contraceptive to a married couple. The law, a legacy of Anthony Comstock's anti-vice campaign of the late nineteenth century, had been interpreted to ban the use of contraceptives and the opening of public clinics, which meant that women could not attain access to reliable contraception unless they could afford private physicians.

The Supreme Court decision in Griswold v. Connecticut reversed the Connecticut law by extending constitutional protection to the individual's right to Privacy. However, the Supreme Court was uncertain about the source of this right. The plurality opinion, written by Justice William O. Douglas, argued that several provisions of the Bill of Rights combine to create "penumbras"—that is, rights not explicitly set forth but nonetheless guaranteed by implication—and thus protected "zones of privacy." A married couple's choice about parenthood lay within that zone. Two dissenters from the right of privacy, Hugo Black and Potter Stewart, accused the majority of writing their personal opinions into constitutional doctrine and violating the principle of judicial self-restraint. It was a curious decision: No one publicly opposed the legalization of birth control, but many legal scholars agreed with the dissenters' accusations. Eight years later, Roe v. Wade (1973) revealed the explosive potential of Griswold and other privacy decisions as precedents by ruling that the right of privacy included a limited right to elective abortion.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Baer, Judith A. Women in American Law: The Struggle toward Equality from the New Deal to the Present. New York: Holmes and Meier, 1996.

Ball, Howard, and Phillip Cooper. Of Power and Right: Hugo Black, William O. Douglas, and America's Constitutional Revolution. New York: Oxford University Press, 1992.

Judith A. Baer / a. r.

See also Birth Control Movement ; Roe v. Wade .