Document Type

Article

Publication Title

Yale Law Journal Forum

Abstract

This year marks the fiftieth anniversary of Griswold v. Connecticut, the Supreme Court decision that famously articulated a right to privacy. As we celebrate Griswold, it is easy to overlook what preceded it—and what was surrendered in Griswold’s embrace of the right to privacy. In 1960, five years before Griswold reached the Supreme Court, Yale law professor Fowler V. Harper and civil rights attorney Catherine Roraback launched a series of federal challenges to Connecticut’s ban on contraceptive use and counseling. Like Griswold, these cases, Poe v. Ullman and Trubek v. Ullman, eventually reached the United States Supreme Court. The Court, however, dismissed both of these pre- Griswold challenges. Five years later, after the Planned Parenthood League of Connecticut opened a birth control clinic, prompting the arrests of its executive director, Estelle Griswold, and its chief physician, C. Lee Buxton, the Court reached the merits of the contraceptive ban in Griswold. Not surprisingly, Poe v. Ullman and Trubek v. Ullman have lived in Griswold’s shadow. Today, Poe v. Ullman is rarely mentioned, except as a footnote to Griswold and as an illustration of the jurisdictional requirement of ripeness. Trubek v. Ullman, which was dismissed alongside Poe, now receives even less attention. Trubek’s liminal position in the narrative of reproductive rights is unfortunate. As this brief Essay argues, this often-overlooked case offered an alternative framing for the development of reproductive rights and our understanding of marriage—a framing that, unlike Griswold, gestured toward the concept of women’s equal citizenship even as it embraced the notion of marital privacy.

First Page

324

Volume

124

Publication Date

2015

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