The right to privacy is pretty clear.

Let us not overthink things.

Photo by Ethan Haddox on Unsplash

If the truth be told, the list of things that baffles me is rather long: The list begins with Republicans, contains cats, goes through Marxism, and on through to the techniques for the perfect risotto.

Tucked well into the list, but forgotten as it had long seemed settled, is the debate around whether a right to privacy exists in the Constitution.

Challenges to abortion rights are, ostensibly, on their way to the Supreme Court and, so, the issue appears about to be revisited. If the right to an abortion is overturned is may well be on the Conservative antipathy to what they see as this ‘manufactured’ right of privacy.

How did this notion of privacy in the Constitution come about? In 1965, in the case of Griswold v Connecticut, the Supreme Court struck down a law that punished married couples and doctors who counseled them, in the purchase and use of contraceptives. It is the case in which 7 of the then sitting Justices agreed that a right to marital privacy exists. A later court used Griswold to underpin the right to an abortion in Roe v Wade on the same grounds of privacy.

It is true, as many conservatives trumpet, that the word ‘privacy’ appears nowhere in the Constitution. (Of course, these are the same people who argue that the one amendment…