Document Type
Article
Publication Date
2015
Abstract
Challenges to federal law requiring insurance coverage of contraception are occurring on the eve of the 50th Anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Griswold v. Connecticut. It is a good time to reflect on the values served by protecting women’s access to contraception.
In 1965, the Court ruled in Griswold that a law criminalizing the use of contraception violated the privacy of the marriage relationship. Griswold offered women the most significant constitutional protection since the Nineteenth Amendment gave women the right to vote, constitutional protection as important as the cases prohibiting sex discrimination that the Court would decide in the next decade—perhaps even more so. Griswold is conventionally understood to have secured liberty for women. But the right to contraception also secures equality for women, as Ruth Bader Ginsburg saw clearly in the 1970s and as the Court eventually would explain in Planned Parenthood v. Casey.
Citation
Neil S. Siegel & Reva B. Siegel, Contraception as a Sex Equality Right, 124 Yale Law Journal Forum 349-358 (2015)
Library of Congress Subject Headings
Birth control--Law and legislation, Equality before the law, Griswold v. Connecticut, Constitutional law
Included in
Civil Rights and Discrimination Commons, Constitutional Law Commons, Law and Gender Commons
Available at: https://scholarship.law.duke.edu/faculty_scholarship/3415