What is Griswold v. Connecticut? How access to contraception and other privacy rights could be at risk after SCOTUS overturned Roe v. Wade

• SCOTUS overturned on Friday the Roe v. Wade ruling that granted women the constitutional right to an abortion.
• Justice Thomas wrote in a concurring opinion that the court should also "reconsider" rulings that protect contraception access and same-sex marriage.

The Supreme Court voted to overturn the 1973 landmark Roe v. Wade ruling that granted women the constitutional right to an abortion.

But it also called into question a landmark 1965 decision, Griswold v. Connecticut, which protects the right to marital privacy as well as the use of contraceptives.

Justice Samuel Alito, who authored the opinion of the nation's highest court, declared that Roe was "egregiously wrong from the start" and "the States may regulate abortion" now. In the opinion, Alito maintained that the right to an abortion was a part of the right to privacy — neither of which are included in the Constitution.

Though Alito pledged that revoking abortion rights would not pose a risk to other rights, Justice Clarence Thomas broke from the court's conservative majority in reconsidering other rulings based in the 14th Amendment's due process clause.

In a concurring opinion, Thomas, who is considered to be the court's most conservative justice, wrote that the court should also "reconsider" other landmark rulings in the wake of overturning Roe v. Wade.

"For that reason, in future cases, we should reconsider all of this Court's substantive due process precedents, including Griswold, Lawrence, and Obergefell," Thomas, widely considered to be the court's most conservative justice, wrote in a concurring opinion.

Law experts previously warned that singling out the right to privacy this way exposes a weak spot that could jeopardize more than just abortion rights, including access to birth control pills and emergency contraception as well as marriage equality and gay rights.

Griswold v. Connecticut is among the decisions that supports Roe and created the "inferred right to privacy," according to Brian Marks, a professor of economics at the University of New Haven.

The inferred right to privacy has served as the foundation to other landmark Supreme Court decisions — including Obergefell v. Hodges in 2015, which legalized gay marriage; Loving v. Virginia in 1967, which legalized interracial marriage; and Lawrence v. Texas in 2003, which legalized same-sex sexual activity.

By questioning the constitutionality of a right to privacy, Marks told Insider in an interview before Friday's SCOTUS ruling that it posits the question: "What is the definition of liberty?"

"If I ask you to find the right to privacy in the US constitution, you will not find it — there is no explicit right to privacy in the US constitution," Marks said. "So if that draft of opinion becomes the majority opinion and at least five justices sign onto it, even to the extent they may narrow the scope, it doesn't mean there won't be incremental changes in other decisions along the way."

"What we wind up seeing is to what extent is Griswold v. Connecticut the next one to fall," he continued. "Roe v. Wade is problematic. I'll call Roe versus Wade a punch to the gut. Griswold v. Connecticut, if it were to go next, that right to privacy as inferred would be a blow to the head."