Griswold v. Connecticut - The Right To Privacy

Since Griswold and, even more significant, Roe v. Wade (1973), it has been commonplace to refer to a "right to privacy." But just as people tend to erroneously attribute to the Bible statements such as "The Lord helps them that help themselves," there is no reference to a "right to privacy" in the Constitution. Nonetheless, many would say that the above expression is consistent with the Bible, and likewise the idea of a right to privacy is certainly consistent with the Constitution.

Using Griswold as their model, Linda Coffee and Sarah Weddington, legal counsel for the petitioner in Roe, based their argument on the idea that the Ninth Amendment offers a protection of "the right to privacy" in its reservation for the people of all rights not otherwise enumerated. The actual location of this right in the Constitution may have been problematic, Justice Harry Blackmun suggested when he delivered the Court's opinion, but the existence of the right itself was not: "This right of privacy, whether it be found in the Fourteenth Amendment's conception of personal liberty and restrictions on state action . . . or . . . in the Ninth Amendment's reservation of rights to the people, is broad enough . . . "