the right to study a foreign language (Meyer v. Nebraska), salute a flag (West Virginia Board of Education v. Barnett), or the right of privacy in an association (NAACP v. Alabama) , the Supreme Court had previously decided that these personal decisions were embodied in the Constitution under the Fourteenth Amendment.It should be noted at this point that Eisenstadt v. Baird, decided in 1972, extended the Griswold ruling by striking down state laws that prohibited unmarried persons the access to contraceptive devises. This was somewhat controversial for many believed that if the defendants in Griswold were not married couples, the issue of marital privacy could not have been looked at, and the ruling would presumably be challenged. The social and political ramifications of both Griswold and, seven years later, of Eisenstadt, are obvious in the social and political climate of today=s United States. Today there is still an endless debate over the implications that both cases concluded. The cases that followed, including one of the U.S. Supreme Courts most controversial rulings Roe v. Wade, created a timeless debate over the citizens private choice of contraception. AThe overlap between the right to choice and the right to privacy is a recurrent theme, particularly in abortion cases and, on closer inspection, in every other area of reproductive rights and in allied privacy rights as well.@Since this ruling, the Supreme Court has used judicial review (or the Due Process Clause) to strike down many state laws they found unconstitutional. The Griswold case, in fact, has set a precedence for numerous controversial cases involving privacy issues. Roe v. Wade (1973) is probably the most controversial of these cases. The decision, which was handed down on January 23, 1973, deemed the Texas and Georgia abortion laws unconstitutional. The Texas case, Roe v. Wade, concerned a statute which restricted legal abortions to those deemed necessary to save ...
