Facts—This case involved the constitutionality of Connecticut’s birth control law. The statute provided that “any person who uses any drug, medical article or instrument for the purpose of preventing conception” was to be subject to fine or imprisonment or both. The statute further specified that a person who assisted another in committing any offense could be prosecuted and punished as if he were the principal offender. Estelle Griswold, executive director of the Planned Parenthood League of Connecticut, was convicted of being an accessory.
Question—Is the Connecticut statute proscribing birth control valid under the Constitution?
Decision—No.
Reasons—J. Douglas (7–2). First, the appellants were held to have standing to raise the constitutional issue because they were accessories to violation of the criminal statute inasmuch as they were advising married persons as to the means of preventing conception. The decision established a new constitutional “right of privacy” citing penumbras, or shadows, of provisions in the First, Third, Fourth, Fifth, Ninth, and Fourteenth Amendments. The Court noted that “specific guarantees in the Bill of Rights have penumbras, formed by emanations from those guarantees that help give them life and substance. . . the right of privacy which presses for recognition here is a legitimate one. The present case, then, concerns a relationship lying within the zone of privacy created by several constitutional guarantees. We deal with a right of privacy older than the Bill of Rights.” In the course of the opinion the Court referred favorably to the Ninth Amendment’s provision that “The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.”
J. Goldberg’s concurring opinion emphasized the Ninth Amendment.
J. Black and J. Stewart authored dissents distinguishing between the wisdom (or unwisdom) of a law and its constitutionality. Neither could find specific constitutional authority for the Court’s discovery of a right to privacy within the Constitution.
Note—The right to privacy that this decision recognized became the corner- stone of the abortion decision in Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113 (1973).
