William O. Douglas

“ When the Framers wrote the Bill of Rights they enshrined in the form of constitutional guarantees those rights-in part substantive, in part procedural which experience indicated were indispensable to a free society. Some would disagree as to their importance; the debate concerning them did indeed start before their adoption and has continued to this day. Yet the constitutional conception of 'due process' must, in my view, include them all until and unless there are amendments that remove them. ”

“ Leveling the discourse of medical men to the morality of a particular community is a deadening influence. Mill spoke of the pressures of intolerant groups that produce 'either mere conformers to commonplace, or time-servers for truth.' [5] We witness in this case a sealing of the lips of a doctor because he desires to observe the law, obnoxious as the law may be. The State has no power to put any sanctions of any kind on him for any views or beliefs that he has or for any advice he renders. ”

“ The nature of the controversy would not be changed one iota had a dozen doctors, representing a dozen birth-control clinics, sued for remedial relief.
What are these people-doctor and patients-to do? Flout the law and go to prison? Violate the law surreptitiously and hope they will not get caught? By today's decision we leave them no other alternatives. It is not the choice they need have under the regime of the declaratory judgment and our constitutional system. It is not the choice worthy of a civilized society. ”

“ Social legislation dealing with business and economic matters touches no particularized prohibition of the Constitution, unless it be the provision of the Fifth Amendment that private property should not be taken for public use without just compensation. ”

“ That is an invasion of the privacy that is implicit in a free society. A noted theologian who conceives of the use of a contraceptive as a 'sin' nonetheless admits that a 'use' statute such as this enters a forbidden domain.
'* * * the Connecticut statute confuses the moral and legal, in that it transposes without further ado a private sin into a public crime. The criminal act here is the private use of contraceptives. The real area where the coercions of law might, and ought to, be applied, at least to control an evil namely, the contraceptive industry-is quite overlooked. ”

“ The actor on stage or screen, the artist whose creation is in oil or clay or marble, the poet whose reading public may be practically nonexistent, the musician and his musical scores, the counselor whether priest, parent or teacher no matter how small his audience-these too are beneficiaries of freedom of expression. ”

“ The enforcement of criminal laws in minor courts has just as much impact as in those cases where appellate courts are resorted to. The need of the protection of constitutional guarantees, and the right to them, are not less because the matter is small or the court lowly. See Thompson v. City of Louisville, 362 U.S. 199, 80 S.Ct. 624, 4 L.Ed.2d 654; Tumey v. State of Ohio, 273 U.S. 510, 47 S.Ct. 437, 71 L.Ed. 749. Nor is the need lacking because the dispensing of birth-control information is by a single doctor rather than by birth-control clinics. ”

“ The regime of a free society needs room for vast experimentation. Crises, emergencies, experience at the individual and community levels produce new insights; problems emerge in new dimensions; needs, once never imagined, appear. ”

“ A sick wife, a concerned husband, a conscientious doctor seek a dignified, discrete, orderly answer to the critical problem confronting them. We should not turn them away and make them flout the law and get arrested to have their constitutional rights determined. ”

“ The same might be said of a state law banning the manufacture of contraceptives. Health, religious, and moral arguments might be marshalled pro and con. Yet it is not for judges to weigh the evidence. Where either the sale or the manufacture is put under regulation, the strictures are on business and commercial dealings that have had a long history with the police power of the States. ”

“ I am also clear that this Connecticut law as applied to this married couple deprives them of 'liberty' without due process of law, as that concept is used in the Fourteenth Amendment.
The first eight Amendments to the Constitution have been made applicable to the States only in part. My view has been that when the Fourteenth Amendment was adopted, its Due Process Clause incorporated all of those Amendments. See Adamson v. People of State of California, 332 U.S. 46, 68, 67 S.Ct. 1672, 1684, 91 L.Ed. 1903 (dissenting opinion) . ”

“ The use of contraceptive devices would also constitute a crime. And it is alleged-and admitted by the State-that the State's Attorney intends to enforce the law by prosecuting offenses under the laws.
A public clinic dispensing birth-control information has indeed been closed by the State. Doctors and a nurse working in that clinic were arrested by the police and charged with advising married women on the use of contraceptives. That litigation produced State v. Nelson, 126 Conn. 412, 11 A.2d 856, which upheld these statutes. ”

“ These, then, are the circumstances in which the Court feels that it can, contrary to every principle of American or English common law, [3] go outside the record to conclude that there exists a 'tacit agreement' that these statutes will not be enforced. ”

“ A society that tells its doctors under pain of criminal penalty what they may not tell their patients is not a free society. Only free exchange of views and information is consistent with 'a civilization of the dialogue,' to borrow a phrase from Dr. ”

“ One wife is pathetically ill, having delivered a stillborn fetus. If she becomes pregnant again, her life will be gravely jeopardized. This couple have been unable to get medical advice concerning the 'best and safest' means to avoid pregnancy from their physician, plaintiff in No. ”