During the later half of the 20th Century, the United States went through immense social changes and one of the factors of these changes were court decisions made by the highest federal court of the United States. A growing emphasis on the liberties of privacy and equal rights became apparent during this time and would change the relationship between citizens and their respective government. In particular, the issue of women’s reproductive rights, as exemplified through the two court cases of Griswold v. Connecticut and Roe v. Wade, showed increasingly how the Supreme Court decided to give citizens their rights of social freedoms that were being forbidden by government laws. Citizens during this period viewed the legislation passed by state …show more content…
Connecticut and Roe v. Wade. During the case of Griswold v. Connecticut, the issue of the right of privacy came about as key to the case and how married couples should have the privacy to choose how they want to plan their births, along with the privacy between physicians and their patients (Johnson 94). This argument of privacy was apparent to the majority of the Supreme Court at the time as an issue and they identified it as a major crux of the situation at hand. Justice Douglas’s opinion would give the basis for what would be a right for privacy by saying that “specific guarantees in the Bill of Rights have penumbras” that provides a constitutional backing to the privacy argument (Johnson 168). This interpretation would have reverberating consequences on the political and legal landscape. This power of interpretation was also apparent in Roe v. Wade where the Supreme Court had in their potential to either extend the logic of the women’s movement by saying that it is their choice to do what they want with their bodies or it would give the women's movement a bigger battle it would endure in state legislature (Hull 137). This power showed why the Supreme Court had to assemble opinions that exemplified what they thought about the case while making it sound enough to be able to exist in a future legal and political landscape that would affect individual citizens and the