Almost all American adults – including parents, medical patients, and people who are sexually active – regularly exercise their right to privacy, even if they don’t know it.
Privacy is not specifically mentioned in the U.S. Constitution. But for half a century, the Supreme Court has recognized it as an outgrowth of protections for individual liberty. As I have studied in my research on constitutional privacy rights, this implied right to privacy is the source of many of the nation’s most cherished, contentious, and commonly used rights – including the right to have an abortion.
