Beyond abortion, Roe v. Wade drew on and reinforced a constitutional privacy doctrine that also protects access to contraception, the freedom to marry across racial lines and between same-sex partners, private consensual intimacy between adults, parents’ authority over their children’s upbringing and education, and the right to refuse unwanted medical treatment. All of these rights still stand as binding law after the Supreme Court’s 2022 Dobbs decision. But because they share the same legal foundation Dobbs rejected in the abortion context, their long-term security has become a live question.1Supreme Court of the United States. Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization
The Shared Constitutional Root
Every right in this list traces back to one clause in the Fourteenth Amendment: no state may deprive any person of life, liberty, or property without due process of law.2Congress.gov. U.S. Constitution – Fourteenth Amendment Over decades, the Supreme Court read “liberty” to include fundamental personal freedoms the Constitution never names outright. Scholars call this substantive due process. The idea is simple: some decisions are so personal that government needs an extraordinarily strong reason to interfere with them.
When a right qualifies as “fundamental,” any law restricting it faces the toughest form of judicial review. The government must show a compelling purpose and no less intrusive way to achieve it. Roe applied this reasoning to abortion, but the Court had already applied the same logic to contraception, marriage, and family life. Roe inherited the privacy doctrine; it did not invent it. That is why asking what else Roe protected is really asking about the entire body of privacy cases Roe stood alongside.
What Dobbs Said About the Other Rights
In Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the Court held that the Constitution does not protect a right to abortion, overruling Roe and Planned Parenthood v. Casey.3Justia U.S. Supreme Court Center. Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, 597 U.S. 215 The majority stated plainly: “Nothing in this opinion should be understood to cast doubt on precedents that do not concern abortion.”1Supreme Court of the United States. Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization Justice Kavanaugh’s concurrence went further, listing Griswold, Lawrence, and Obergefell by name as cases the decision does not disturb.
Justice Thomas took the opposite position in his own concurrence. He urged the Court to “reconsider all of this Court’s substantive due process precedents, including Griswold, Lawrence, and Obergefell.”1Supreme Court of the United States. Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization His view did not command a majority. But it signaled that at least one sitting justice sees the rights below as resting on the same reasoning the Court rejected for abortion.
Dobbs also leaned on a test drawn from Washington v. Glucksberg: a right qualifies for substantive due process protection only if it is “deeply rooted in this Nation’s history and tradition.”4Justia U.S. Supreme Court Center. Washington v. Glucksberg, 521 U.S. 702 Older rights like parental authority over education comfortably clear that bar. Newer recognitions, particularly same-sex marriage from 2015, are more exposed if a future Court applies the test rigidly.
Contraception
The privacy doctrine Roe later built on actually began with birth control. In Griswold v. Connecticut, the Supreme Court struck down a state law that made using contraceptives a crime.5Justia U.S. Supreme Court Center. Griswold v. Connecticut, 381 U.S. 479 The Court held that the Bill of Rights implies a zone of privacy the government must respect, and that policing what married couples do in their bedroom falls outside state authority.6Library of Congress. Griswold v. Connecticut, 381 U.S. 479
Seven years later, Eisenstadt v. Baird extended that protection to unmarried people. The right of privacy, the Court reasoned, belongs to the individual, not to the married couple as a unit.7United States Supreme Court. Eisenstadt v. Baird, 405 U.S. 438 Together, the two cases place the decision of whether to prevent pregnancy with you, not the state.
After Dobbs, Congress introduced the Right to Contraception Act to write these protections into federal statute rather than rely solely on court precedent.8Congress.gov. S.422 – Right to Contraception Act It has not become law. If it eventually passes, it would add a statutory backstop that a shift in judicial philosophy alone could not undo.
Marriage
Marriage sits at the center of the privacy framework. The Court has treated it as a fundamental right for over a century, and two landmark rulings draw directly on the liberty interests Roe later relied on.
Interracial Marriage
Loving v. Virginia unanimously struck down state bans on marriage between people of different races. Virginia’s anti-miscegenation statutes violated both the Equal Protection and Due Process Clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment.9Justia U.S. Supreme Court Center. Loving v. Virginia, 388 U.S. 1 The Court recognized marriage as a fundamental freedom the state cannot restrict through racial classifications.10Supreme Court of the United States. Loving v. Virginia
Same-Sex Marriage
Obergefell v. Hodges extended the same logic to same-sex couples in 2015. The Court held that the right to personal choice regarding marriage is inherent in individual autonomy, and that same-sex couples cannot be excluded from that freedom without violating the Fourteenth Amendment.11Justia U.S. Supreme Court Center. Obergefell v. Hodges, 576 U.S. 644 The opinion cited Griswold, Eisenstadt, Lawrence, and Loving — the same chain of privacy cases that supported Roe.12Supreme Court of the United States. Obergefell v. Hodges
The Respect for Marriage Act
In December 2022, Congress passed the Respect for Marriage Act. The law repealed the Defense of Marriage Act and requires every state to give full faith and credit to marriages performed in other states, regardless of the sex, race, or ethnicity of the spouses.13GovInfo. Respect for Marriage Act, Public Law 117-228 For federal purposes, any marriage between two people that was valid where it was performed must be recognized across all federal agencies and programs.14Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 1 U.S. Code 7 – Marriage
The statute provides a floor that does not depend on the Court keeping Obergefell. It is not a full substitute for the constitutional right, though. A state could theoretically stop issuing new marriage licenses to same-sex couples if Obergefell fell. What the Act prevents is the worst-case outcome of existing marriages being retroactively voided or refused federal recognition.
Private Consensual Intimacy
Until 2003, some states still had laws criminalizing private sexual conduct between consenting adults. Lawrence v. Texas struck those laws down, holding that the Due Process Clause protects the right to engage in private, consensual sexual activity without government interference.15Justia U.S. Supreme Court Center. Lawrence v. Texas, 539 U.S. 558 The state, the Court said, has no legitimate interest in criminalizing private sexual conduct between consenting adults.16Supreme Court of the United States. Lawrence v. Texas
Lawrence is one of the rights Justice Thomas specifically named for reconsideration in his Dobbs concurrence. Several states still have unenforced anti-sodomy statutes on the books. If Lawrence were ever overturned, those dormant laws could be revived without any new legislation.
Parents, Children, and Education
Before the Court addressed contraception or marriage through the privacy lens, it recognized parents’ right to direct the upbringing and education of their children. Meyer v. Nebraska in 1923 defined the “liberty” in the Fourteenth Amendment broadly to include the right to marry, establish a home, raise children, and acquire knowledge.17Legal Information Institute. Meyer v. State of Nebraska, 262 U.S. 390 The case struck down a state law that prohibited teaching foreign languages to young students.
Two years later, Pierce v. Society of Sisters invalidated an Oregon law that required all children to attend public schools, effectively outlawing private and religious education. The Court declared that “the child is not the mere creature of the State” and that parents have both the right and duty to prepare their children for life.18Justia U.S. Supreme Court Center. Pierce v. Society of Sisters, 268 U.S. 510
Griswold, Roe, and virtually every substantive due process case that followed cited Meyer and Pierce as foundational. Because these rulings are nearly a century old, they likely satisfy the “deeply rooted in history and tradition” test even under the most restrictive reading, which makes them less exposed than the newer privacy cases.
Refusing Medical Treatment
Bodily autonomy extends to medical decisions. In Cruzan v. Director, Missouri Department of Health, the Supreme Court recognized that a competent person has a constitutionally protected liberty interest in refusing unwanted medical treatment, including life-sustaining care.19Legal Information Institute. Cruzan v. Director, Missouri Department of Health, 497 U.S. 261 The case involved a woman in a persistent vegetative state whose family sought to remove her feeding tube. The Court acknowledged the constitutional dimension of the question even as it upheld the state’s authority to require clear evidence of the patient’s wishes.
Advance directives, living wills, and healthcare powers of attorney all rest on this premise: you decide what happens to your own body. Cruzan sits in the same substantive due process tradition as Griswold and Roe, though it has not drawn the same post-Dobbs political attention.
There is a boundary worth naming. In Washington v. Glucksberg, the Court held unanimously that no fundamental right to physician-assisted suicide exists under the Constitution.4Justia U.S. Supreme Court Center. Washington v. Glucksberg, 521 U.S. 702 Refusing treatment that prolongs your life is protected. Affirmatively seeking help to end it is not constitutionally required, though some states allow it by statute.
Suing When a Right Is Violated
When a government official violates any of these constitutional rights, federal law provides a path to sue. Under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, anyone acting under state authority who deprives you of a constitutional right can be held personally liable for damages.20Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 42 U.S. Code 1983 – Civil Action for Deprivation of Rights A successful suit can recover compensatory damages for financial losses, emotional harm, and other injuries. A separate statute allows the court to award attorney fees to a prevailing plaintiff.21Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 42 U.S. Code 1988 – Proceedings in Vindication of Civil Rights
Qualified immunity is the main obstacle. Government officials are shielded from liability unless the right they violated was “clearly established” at the time, meaning existing court decisions had already made the unconstitutionality of the conduct obvious.22Congressional Research Service. Policing the Police – Qualified Immunity and Considerations for Congress For long-settled rights like contraception access or interracial marriage, that bar is easy to clear. For newer or contested applications of the privacy doctrine, it can be much harder. The statute of limitations for a Section 1983 claim follows the personal injury deadline in your state, typically two to four years.
If you cannot prove concrete harm, damages can drop to a nominal amount, potentially as little as one dollar. Section 1983 does not let juries award damages based on how important the violated right is in the abstract. You need evidence of actual injury: lost income, medical costs, emotional distress, or similar measurable harm.