not obtained the status of illegality yet. He then said therefore when the Ninth Amendment was

Carthart: Women Retain Their Right to Choose”, in the Supreme Court Case, Stenberg verses Carthart, declared that; “Nebraska statute banning partial birth abortions was unconstitutional.” The article also mentions that women need personal privacy and the First Amendment, Fourth Amendment, Ninth Amendment, and Fourteenth Amendment gave women the rights to their own personal freedom (Berkowitz 2001). As learned in class, the First Amendment of the United States gave people the right to express their speech, religion, press, and assembly freely. The Fourth Amendment gave the right for people to search your house but only with a warrant. The Fourteenth Amendment dealt with equal protection rights.

This case challenged the rights of marital privacy within the home. In 1961, Griswold and her partner, Dr. Buxton, opened a birth control clinic in New Haven, Connecticut. A law enacted in 1879 made it illegal to use anything to prevent contraception in the state. That’s right, nothing could be used to prevent pregnancy. Consequently due to their actions, Griswold and Buxton were arrested, tried, found guilty, and fined to pay $100. Griswold appealed her conviction to the United States Supreme Court, arguing that the state was in breach of multiple amendments including the fourteenth, first, and of course, the third amendment. The argument based on the third amendment was that the home is and should be a private place. No one is to know what happens in the home, or in the bedroom for that matter. The only way to prove that the women who visited the clinic were actually using birth control would be storm their homes. In the end, it was found that Connecticut's actions were unconstitutional and this court case paved the way for future cases such as the famous Roe vs Wade

In 1973, Norma McCovery who is also known as Jane Roe brought a case to the Supreme Court. She and her defense team claimed that the 1859 Texas abortion law violated women’s constitutional right to have an abortion. Before reaching the Supreme Court, this case, which was a class-action suit, was argued in a Dallas Fifth Circuit Court on May 23, 1970. The judges in Dallas ruled that the Texas law violated Roe’s right to privacy which is found in both the Ninth and Fourteenth Amendment, so this case was then sent to the U.S. Supreme Court (Brannen and Hanes, 2001).

The Founding Fathers of the United States of America laid the foundation for the basic and fundamental rights that its citizens are entitled to. These principles have been the underlying framework for the United States of America’s government and legal system, where the citizens hold the power. Throughout the country’s history, many laws on both state and federal levels have been challenged and have thus evolved America’s culture. Among these laws that have challenged the Constitution is a famous court case from 1965: Griswold v. Connecticut. A highly controversial case, Griswold v. Connecticut paved the way for future controversies and legal development of its kind.

Eisenstadt v. Baird was a landmark decision by the US Supreme Court. It ruled in favor of unmarried couples using birth control. Griswold v. Connecticut provided the right for secrecy under the marital bedroom only, but not birth control on unmarried couples. The ruling was based it violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. The argument was simple. The law which the defendants were penalized was a Massachusetts law of “Crimes Against Chastity”. Because it did not prosecuted marry couples due to buying, possessing, or using birth controls, it was discriminatory this law persecuted unmarried couples for it. Also it was ruled one of the defendants was exercising his freedom of speech, when distributing birth control. Therefore he could not be punished. Judge Brennan wrote in his opinion

"The Court today is correct in holding that the right asserted by Jane Roe is embraced within the personal liberty protected by the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. It is evident that the Texas abortion statute infringes that right directly. Indeed, it is difficult to imagine a more complete abridgment of a constitutional freedom than that worked by the inflexible criminal statute now in force in Texas. The question then becomes whether the state interests advanced to justify this abridgment can survive the 'particularly careful scrutiny' that the Fourteenth Amendment here requires. The asserted state interests are protection of the health and safety of the pregnant woman, and protection of the potential

During the years leading up to and after 1973, there were numerous events and situations that occurred. Before 1965, the idea of right to privacy was barely used, but Griswold v. Connecticut (1965) changed that. “The case involved a Connecticut law forbidding the use of contraceptives” (Edwards III, Wattenberg, and Lineberry 131). A doctor and a family-planner were arrested for distributing the use of contraceptives for couples in need. They were eventually brought to court by the state and were convicted. The case was taken to the Supreme Court and was later decided that everyone is entitled to their “right to privacy.” This set the precedent for Roe v. Wade because without Griswold v. Connecticut, the decision might be completely different than what it is now. A court case called Rust v. Sullivan was related to abortion. It specified that “family planning services receiving federal funds could not provide women any counseling regard abortion” (Edwards III, Wattenberg, and Lineberry 131). This decision created public scrutiny as the decision would violate the First Amendment. President Clinton eventually lifted the ban on abortion counseling as it

It states in the decision of Roe v. Wade that, “The constitution does not define “person” in so many words” (http://www.tourolaw.edu/patch/Roe/ 18). The amendment discusses “person” 3 times in it, but it does not indicate that it has any possible pre-natal relevance; this is what made the abortion issue so hard. The state court ruled in favor of Roe, but the verdict was not strong enough to change the arrest of abortion doctors in Texas because the exact part that dealt with the right to privacy could not be decided

Nevertheless, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of Griswold, and her claim that the state contraceptive law was unconstitutional.

Professor James Mohr argues that the purpose of statutes like Kansas was to protect women. Abortions during this period were extremely dangerous. This was especially true with intrusive abortions like the one used in the Wilcox case. The large number of prosecutions brought because of the woman’s death seems to suggest that one of the goals was to protect women from the very deadly procedure. Furthermore, during this time, feminists believed that abortion was a crime done by men against woman and were generally opposed to the practice. An 1867 Kansas op-ed in favor of woman’s suffrage, said that when it came to the offense of abortion, “the victims are also women.” Which is supported by the fact that women were often pressured or coerced into abortions by their husbands or

The Bradwell v Illinois took place in 1872. This was a case in which a women named Myra Bradwell applied to a law school in Illinois and was denied acceptance. Myra Bradwell had everything she needed to get accepted to the school of law she applied to, she had everything except one thing, Myra was not a male. The law school to which Myra applied to denied her acceptance simply because she was a woman! They denied Bradwell an education in law simply because practicing law wasn’t considered ladylike. They told her that law belonged to men and not women. Regardless, Myra didn’t want to be a stay home, she didn’t want to settle for just the role of a mother and a wife so she went for it. Myra appealed the court She argued that it was her God-given

Blackmun argued that the right to privacy, as defined in the Griswold v. Connecticut decision in 1965, included “the abortion decision.” In the ninth amendment, Blackmun argued, was “broad enough to encompass a woman’s decision whether or not to terminate her pregnancy.” However, despite this argument of a woman’s right to end her pregnancy being cover under the “right to privacy” as established in Griswold,

Facts: Griswold v. Connecticut is similar to the case Roe v. Wade which are both based on the problem of privacy. Griswold the Executive Director of Planned Parenthood is a licensed medical director. He was also a professor at Yale University Medical School. Griswold gave advice to a married couple on how to prevent conception by using contraceptives. Under the law Connecticut violated the counseling or medical treatment to a married couple for the purpose of preventing conception.

In 1973, the US Supreme Court declared abortion a nationwide fundamental right through a trial called Roe vs. Wade and protected this right underneath the Fourteenth Amendment, more specifically, the right to privacy. A basic human right, especially one outlined by the Supreme Court, must never run at risk or threat chiefly because not everyone agrees with it. Under no circumstances should a pregnancy ever adjudge mandatory. Abortion is a Constitutional right and as a nation we must fight to give the right and freedom of safe abortions to women all around the nation, make birth control and sex education accessible to women, and raise awareness about the topic itself. (LawCornell)

Abortion did not immediately engrave itself onto public agenda; it had help. The legal debate over the use of birth control proved to be the catalyst needed to propel abortion to the Supreme Court and into the ranks of public policy. The birth control movement was significant to Roe v. Wade because it served as a key in which to unlock the gates of the Supreme Court. The Supreme Courts decision to hear Griswold v. Connecticut, a case that challenged the Connecticut statute prohibiting anyone to “use any drug, article, or instrument to prevent conception or to give assistance or counsel in its use (p.39)”, is arguably the most significant factor in the Court’s