Griswold v. Connecticut: 1964

Before Griswold, the Ninth Amendment had usually been interpreted as reserving to the state government any right not specifically granted to the federal government; Douglas' literal interpretation, that the Ninth Amendment reserved such rights to the people, formed the basis of two other successful challenges to state reproduction laws.

In Eisenstadt v. Baird (1972), single people won the right to purchase and use contraceptives. Justice William J. Brennan, a concurring justice in Griswold, delivered the majority opinion:

If under Griswold the distribution of contraceptives to married persons cannot be prohibited, a ban on distribution to unmarried persons would be equally impermissible. It is true that in Griswold the right of privacy in question inhered in the marital relationship. Yet the marital couple is not an independent entity with a mind and heart of its own, but an association of two individuals each with a separate intellectual and emotional makeup. 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.

The following year, in its controversial Roe v. Wade (see separate entry) decision, the Court held that the "right of privacy … is broad enough to encompass a woman's decision whether or not to terminate her pregnancy."