Griswold v. Connecticut established the precedent for the right to privacy, laying the foundation for the right to contraception, abortion, same-sex intimate relationships, and same-sex marriage.Two years ago next month, the right-wing justices on the U.S.
Supreme Court overturned Roe v.Wade, which for nearly 50 years had established the constitutional right to abortion. In his concurring opinion, embattled Justice Clarence Thomas issued a call for cases to be brought before the nation’s highest court, declaring that rulings that had also established the rights to contraception and same-sex marriage were, in his opinion, wrongly-decided.
Justice Thomas declared the Court “should reconsider all of this Court’s substantive due process precedents, including Griswold, Lawrence, and Obergefell” — making clear he wanted the Court to overturn those rulings, and by doing so, strike down the constitutional rights to contraception, same-sex intimacy, and same-sex marriage.“All three cases—and numerous other landmark decisions—are built upon the right to substantive due process found in the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments of the Constitution, which prohibit the government from depriving ‘any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law,'” as TIME reported in 2022.READ MORE: Republicans Grind House to a Standstill After Democrat Says ‘Trump Is Not a King’Griswold, decided in 1965, established the right of married couples to use contraception.
The Justices at the time cited various reasons for declaring a Connecticut law banning the use of contraception unconstitutional, including by establishing the right to privacy, which far-right justices on today’s Supreme Court have indicated they do not support.Months.
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