“The issue in Roe is effectively when the rights of the unborn are vested (a subject that the Supreme Court evaded in the decision).”
Along with deciding whether or not the thing in utero, the thing that could, before birth, inherit and be murdered by other than his mother, was a PERSON. Absolutely incomprehensible decision on multiple levels.
And Griswold wasn’t a whole lot better, a natural precusor to dozens of judicial legislations. And—oddly or not so oddly, on the heels of the demise of the House Committee on UnAmerican Activities (another Democrat triumph).
The principle in Griswold re: the prohibition of the state to interfere with "fundamental liberties" not specifically enumerated in the Bill of Rights was clearly a positive step, especially in light of the wholesale destruction of liberties during the New Deal era. The principle of Griswold is sound and that principle is that there are certain individual liberties that the state has no business interfering with and that they have no legitimate authority to do so.
The principle was terribly distorted in Roe in that the Court took the opportunity to create a "fundamental right" to kill unborn children, a supposedly "fundamental" right which had never before existed in the history of mankind.
The right to be left alone, the right to live your life peacefully without any unnecessary government intrusion was very forcefully enunciated by Justice Stewart in his concurring opinion in Griswold, and this is an opinion which I believe goes back to the founding principles of our Republic. Douglas' Court opinion was not as forceful and really was not all the coherent. I frankly think Douglas' opinion was somewhat incoherent on purpose because Douglas saw in this case the future opportunity to create a fundamental right to abortion and then to protect it under the ninth amendment (clearly an abortion of the whole principle of judicial restraint).
No, I think Griswold was a good decision in that it reaffirmed the rights of the individual over that of the government. I think it is a good decision to use to argue that the government has no right to force anyone to (among other things) purchase any insurance policy or to interfere with the legitimate private decisions of a person whether to buy one policy or another or whether to not buy any policy at all.