The jurists who wrote Griswold could not have anticipated the shifting nature and significance of privacy in our technological landscape. How can we balance the rights of women and girls to be protected from image-based abuse with the need to protect the privacy of Internet users?
Griswold’s extension of privacy rights was always restricted to white, married, and class-privileged women. To build strong reproductive justice movements, we need to grapple with the exclusionary nature of privacy rights.
Griswold opened the door for women to exercise greater control over their reproductive lives but also to market intrusions into women’s privacy. Today, privacy is disappearing for women.
Privacy was never enough to ensure freedom for LGBTQ+ and other sexually-minoritized groups, such as sex workers. We need to move beyond privacy rights to achieve erotic justice in US law.
Griswold stands in tension with related judicial rulings that did not extend privacy rights to those distributing sexual products – leaving unresolved the question of whether we have the right to purchase our privacy. What does this mean for abortion access?
Sixty years ago, the Supreme Court issued the landmark ruling, Griswold v. Connecticut. Griswold’s inauguration of privacy rights has powerfully shaped legal and political movements for gender and sexual equality.
