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The Pros And Cons Of Personal Privacy

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In this paper I will analyze the interpretations of privacy and personal liberty employed by the rulings of United States Supreme Court cases such as Griswold v. Connecticut, Roe v. Wade, and Planned Parenthood v. Casey, and propose a notion of privacy and personal liberty that strikes an ideal balance between individual autonomy and the interest of the state. In Griswold v. Connecticut, the leadership of Planned Parenthood were convicted of violating a Connecticut statute which prohibited the use of any drug or article to prevent conception because they provided information on contraception and prescribed a contraceptive device for use by the wife of a married couple. The United States Supreme Court ruled that the Connecticut statute was unconstitutional.1 The court reasoned that the relatively vague nature of several constitutional amendments left room for the implicit establishment of a broader range of rights and protections than those which are more explicitly mentioned in the text of each amendment. Several justices drew from a number of different amendments to support their final ruling including the self-incrimination clause of the fifth amendment, the ninth amendment, and the due process clause of the fourteenth amendment. The key effect of this ruling was that the Supreme Court established an explicit reference to an individual’s constitutional right to privacy and it functionally pitted that right against the interest of the state. In this case, the Supreme Court

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