As the legal doctrine that discovered the right to privacy is set-out? Yes.
I'll explain it for the board.
The origin of "privacy' rights and thus the derivative rights to abortion, contraception and LGBTQ rights, are said to be found in the "emanations" and "penumbras" of the rights
expressly enumerated in the first eight Amendments of the Bill of Rights:
"[The] specific guarantees in the Bill of Rights have penumbras, formed by emanations from those guarantees that help give them life and substance. See Poe v. Ullman, 367 U.S. 497, 516-522 (dissenting opinion).
Griswold v. Connecticut, 381 U.S. 479 (1965)
As cited there in
Griswold, the principle was originally laid out Harlan's famous dissent in
Poe v Ullman. Justice O'Connor, quoted below, expressly elevated Harlan's dissent to the opinion of the Court. It unequivocally explains how the doctrine works (the doctrine also relies on the 9th Amendment, the principle that the Constitution secures unenumerated rights):
"Neither the Bill of Rights nor the specific practices of States at the time of the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment marks the outer limits of the substantive sphere of liberty which the Fourteenth Amendment protects. See U. S. Const., Amend. 9. As the second Justice Harlan recognized:
"[T]he full scope of the liberty guaranteed by the Due Process Clause cannot be found in or limited by the precise terms of the specific guarantees elsewhere provided in the Constitution. This `liberty' is not a series of isolated points pricked out in terms of the taking of property; the freedom of speech, press, and religion; the right to keep and bear arms; the freedom from unreasonable searches and seizures; and so on. It is a rational continuum which, broadly speaking, includes a freedom from all substantial arbitrary impositions and purposeless restraints, . . . and which also recognizes, what a reasonable and sensitive judgment must, that certain interests require particularly careful scrutiny of the state needs asserted to justify their abridgment."
(ellipsis in original)
Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pa. v. Casey, 505 U.S. 833 (1992)
Some questions for discussion if any leftist is interested in demonstrating intellectual integrity:
How does the modern anti-gunner's position on the 2nd Amendment fit into the right to keep and bear arms being a link in the "rational continuum" of individual liberty protected from federal (and state) injury by the Constitution?
Can a right that is found to exist in the "emanations" and "penumbras" of the rights enumerated in the Bill of Rights be
more respected,
more vital and
more secure than a right that is
specifically and expressly enumerated in the Bill of Rights?
Back to my point, can an anti-gunner's hostility for gun rights actually call into question the legitimacy of recognizing and securing the rights to abortion and other reproductive choices or even the gains made in LGBT rights?
IOW, if a link can be cut out, if the "rational continuum" can be broken, how can the doctine of pernumbral rights be argued to exist . . . and if it doesn't exist how does the right to privacy (and abortion, contraception and LGBTQ rights) remain legally recognized and secured?
.
