JS, I would have joined the majority opinion in Griswold, readily. Its reasoning is now dim to me, but the bedrock notion of privacy as a core right throughout our history, even if tacit, and a developing right in the face of encroachments by modern society is so essential as not even to be questioned, to my way of thinking. Extending that notion (which I can go even farther and claim as a sine qua non right of our life together, indeed a "foundational right" upon which most others rest) to, as the Court framed it, "marital privacy," and subsuming under that mantle methods of managing family size through the use of medical aids to the most private of interactions, is about as natural (pardon the pun) a use of the doctrine as I can imagine. There's one more thing I want to note: Griswold addressed a state's intrusion into private matters, scrutable under the 14th Amendment's due process clause. Originally, the first ten amendments did not apply to the states. After passage of the 14th, a concerted effort was made to give "content" to the 14th's due process clause vis-a-via the states. One famous test (Justice Jackson?) was to fathom the needs of "an ordered liberty." There were other such assays. Gradually, the Court settled upon a process of serial "incorporation" of specific rights, but, throughout that effort and beyond, the relevant text remained the 14th's due process clause, with incorporation informing, but I suggest not limiting, its scope. Thus, the famous "penumbras" of Griswold and later (by implication?) Roe were "natural canopies" in 14th-due process jurisprudence, not only there all along but by necessity.
As to Roe, I'll be much briefer. I will nod in the direction of liberal cant and say that while I am conflicted (yet) about the procedure (especially, for me, regarding any fetus that looks remotely like a kid), I defer to others who may disagree and who actually face this potentially agonizing decision. Yet, as I prefer to understand the problem, perhaps slavishly obeisant to the Roe opinion itself, the core of the conflict is the Court's failure to "recognize" a fetus (though there are gradations, up to viability) as a "person" itself within the meaning of the 14th Amendment. Failing that, the fetus simply remains a part of the woman's body (up to viability), and, under a naturally extended right of privacy, subject to her best judgment as to how it should be treated.
