The road to Roe v. Wade started in Conn.

Before there was Roe v. Wade, there was Griswold v. Connecticut. Police arrested Estelle Griswold, director of the state’s Planned Parenthood branch, and Dr. C. Lee Buxton, of Yale Medical School, in New Haven in 1961.

The charge? Dispensing birth control information to married couples, in contravention of a law on the books in the state since 1879.

The two were convicted and fined $100. They fought it through the state court system all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, where they won the landmark case that firmly established a right to privacy.

Roe v. Wade, decided eight years later, affirmed the right of women to obtain abortions if they chose to do so. It firmly stood on Griswold’s shoulders.

Conservative jurists from Robert Bork to Antonin Scalia and beyond had long derided Griswold, mocking then-liberal lion Justice William O. Douglas.

Douglas admitted privacy rights are not explicitly found in the Constitution. Nevertheless, Douglas wrote, they grow from “penumbras” and “emanations” of other rights such as free speech and protections against “unreasonable searches and seizures.”

Roe v. Wade turned the conservative mocking to apoplexy, setting forth a tidal wave that now — with President Donald Trump about to pick retiring Justice Anthony Kennedy’s successor — could wash it away and perhaps all its underpinnings too.

Both of Connecticut’s liberal Democratic senators say if Roe v. Wade is erased by a Trump-fed court with a clear conservative majority, Griswold and the entire foundation of privacy rights could come crashing down next.

“That’s the danger here,” said Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn. “Once you come at abortion, what’s next? I don’t know how you leave the right to privacy untouched if Roe v. Wade is overturned.”

Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee that will conduct confirmation hearings for Kennedy’s replacement, recalled quizzing now-Justice Neil Gorsuch last year on Griswold v. Connecticut, and its relation to Roe v. Wade.

Gorsuch, a reliable conservative vote throughout his first term on the bench, called Griswold an “old case” that had been “repeatedly reaffirmed.” But he dodged whether he thought it had been correctly decided.

“We are at risk of a ‘1984’ even more frightening than Orwell’s novel,” Blumenthal said.

On the other side of the Supreme-Court-nomination battlefield is none other than Raj Shah of Norwalk, who is taking leave of his White House press office perch to oversee confirmation communications, strategy and “messaging coordination with Capitol Hill allies.”

Shah, an affable 33-yearold who is not above admitting things at the White House sometimes go a little haywire, had been rumored to be heading for the exit soon. The same was said about Trump’s chief spokeswoman, Sarah Huckabee Sanders. But both have endured.

Whoever is nominated, the confirmation faces a rocky road in the Senate. But a gaffe-free messaging effort could prove to be a resume enhancer for Shah in conservative circles — even if victory proves elusive at first.

Thursday marks Day 1 of Sen. Chris Murphy’s third annual “Walk Across Connecticut.” The two previous ones were east-west, a distance of about 100 miles or so. This one is north-south, about 70 miles, starting in Hartland on the Connecticut-Massachusetts border and ending Sunday in New Haven.

The shift was in part dictated by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s determination to keep the Senate in session for most of August, which Murphy said significantly cut into his planned walk time.

This summer’s route takes Murphy through 15 towns, promising meet-ups with dog-walkers, joggers, mower-riders and others among the opinionated masses at diners, village greens and shopping centers.

“The fact I’m in a T-shirt, ball cap and shorts helps people warm up to me pretty quickly,” Murphy said. “I find people are more willing to immediately share things with me that they wouldn’t if I were wearing a coat and tie.”

Yes, there are town halls in West Hartford and Meriden, planned dinner breaks and a guaranteed comfy bed at night. But Murphy wants you to know he walks every step of the way, describing himself as a “stickler” for starting in the morning where he stops the night before.

Although Connecticut has scenic highways through bucolic New England countryside, Murphy says he tries his best to walk through residential areas and highways with businesses because — surprise, surprise, that’s where the people are.

“Beautiful scenery and empty roads wouldn’t be the point of the journey,” he said.

A brisk pace with only a hydration pack on his back should make Murphy, 44, a paragon of fitness. But he insists these walks actually result in an addition to his waistline, not subtraction.

Stopping at diners for breakfast and maybe pizza or hot dogs for lunch — and the food-intake all that entails — is the best way to meet people.

“I somehow manage to eat more calories than I burn, which is kind of frustrating,” he said.