From the Homiletic and Pastoral Review article (in post number 4)
In his 1798 "Essay on the Principle of Population," Malthus created the modern "population explosion" scare, saying that unless it were checked, population would outgrow food supplies and result in mass starvation. He recommended only moral means of family limitation, i.e., late marriage and sexual self-control, but his scare would outlive his morality. The discovery of vulcanization of rubber in 1839 led to the production of cheaper, more effective condoms, and armed with this technological breakthrough, the neo-Malthusians of the 1860s substituted condoms for the self-control of Malthus and beat the drums of the population scare. (Fear of the future generally provides a good rationalization for sins of the present.) I call this Stage I of the sexual revolution because at the time it was truly revolutionary to advocate separating the unitive and procreative aspects of marital relations.
In the United States, this led to a reaction led by a Protestant reformer, Anthony Comstock, who persuaded Congress in 1873 to legislate against the distribution and sale of contraceptive devices in federal territories. Many states followed suit, and the conglomerate of anti-contraceptive legislation became known as the Comstock laws.
Griswold v. Connecticut, (1965), in striking down (7-2) a Connecticut law banning the distribution, use, etc., of contraceptives, the court, per Douglas, developed the "penumbra" ["shadow"] doctrine, which held that certain rights, though fundamental and not actually written in the Bill of Rights or the 14th Amendment, nonetheless exist in the Constitution and are enforceable against the federal and state governments. This doctrine states that new rights can be found between the gaps, or "between the lines" of the rights actually written in or "enumerated" by the Constitution. Douglas wrote that the right to marital privacy is fundamental and lies between the gaps of the 1st, 3rd, 4th, 5th, and 9th Amendments.
Black and Stewart dissented at length, holding that a right that is not in the Constitution can not be a "Constitutional right," and that just because a law is bad or stupid, does not make it "unconstitutional."
This case was the genesis of the "right to privacy," being the first time a majority of the court had embraced it.
Roe v. Wade, building upon the legal foundation of v. Connecticut, became the landmark (7-2) abortion decision that voided the abortion laws of nearly every state.
Planned Parenthood v. Casey, (1992) the Court (5-4) upheld a 24-hour waiting period, an informed consent requirement, a parental consent provision for minors and a recordkeeping requirement, while striking down the spousal notice requirement of a Pennsylvania statute.
Planned Parenthood v. Casey, the US Supreme Court decision that confirmed Roe v. Wade [U.S. decision to permit abortions] stated “in some critical respects, abortion is of the same character as the decision to use contraception… for two decades of economic and social developments, people have organized intimate relationships and made choices that define their views of themselves and their places in society, in reliance on the availability of abortion in the event that contraception should fail”.
The Supreme Court decision has made completely unnecessary, any efforts to “expose” what is really behind the attachment of the modern age to abortion. As the Supreme Court candidly states, we need abortion so that we can continue our contraceptive lifestyles.