The 9th amendment to the US Constitution states: "The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people."
The reason our founding fathers thought to include the 9th amendment was because they knew that one day people would try to argue that the Constitution granted our rights and that these same people would argue that if a right was not listed in the Constitution, it does not exist.
That argument is simply wrong. Our rights are natural rights and are not derived in any way from the US Constitution. In fact, the listing of rights in the Bill of Rights was intended as an additional restraint on government. The 9th Amendment extends the same protections granted to the listed rights, to the rights they failed to enumerate in that document.
